Dark Crystaline Eschaton
by Quirinus
Summary: Quorinelya Tierce and others are hired by Fafred the Producer Wannabee to play Slayers in a zero-budget story...
1. 0: Negotiations!

** Quorinelya Tierce and the Slayers **

0: Negotiation! Casting meeting.   


  
Nick reached for his third plate of pasta, pausing to grate some extra cheese over the marinara sauce. He'd easily polished off the two previous plates but had looked as though he was only warming up. Nick looked like a Thomas Nast rendition of Santa Claus, with the physique of an oversized, round, jolly old elf -- whatever that was. He had the same full white beard and the same cheerful and superior expression. Likewise, he had Santa Claus's flushed complexion. He even adopted the same furlined costume. Indeed, the only characteristic that distinguished Nick from St. Nick (aside from his complete lack of interest in bringing free gifts to children) was his replacement of all the red in the standard Santa Claus suit with a royal blue.   
The thin, anxious man sitting opposite him cleared his throat.   
"All right," Nick said jovially, starting another mouthful of pasta. "I'm here and we're at dinner. What's so important that it's a matter of life and death?"   
The man winced. "Please," he pleaded. "Not so loud. If folks hear too much of that, they could panic."   
"Why?" Nick asked. "You weren't talking about them, were you? Don't tell me the life and death are simply about some of the little people here!"   
"Actually, it's about a lot of them."   
"Accuracy, my boy," Nick laughed. "If you mean all of them, then just say so."   
The anxious young man smiled sickly and said, "Well yes. It's all of them."   
"All right then!" Nick exclaimed. "Now we know where we stand. So it's another plot to save the world. Am I right or am I right?"   
The anxious man sighed. "You're right," he said.   
"So why should anyone care?" Nick asked.   
"Pardon?"   
"Why should anyone care if some ultimate evil trashes this place and turns everyone everywhere into mindless zombies or ravenous vampires or whatever the local flavor of Really Bad Thing is? I mean, look at this place!"   
Unable to help himself, the anxious man looked past Nick at the rest of the room they were in. Unlike his guest, the anxious host had been obsessed about sitting with his back to a nice, safe wall. Nick had been unconcerned about leaving his back vulnerable. That was self-confidence for you.   
The room looked like the smoky common room of a roadside inn and tavern. The taverner was workiing his kegs while his wife tended the spit upon which a haunch of roasting meat turned. There was a buzz of raucous conversation and laughter that overwhelmed the reedy voice of a minstrel who was singing a fairly common version of a familiar old tune. The battered old lute, the man accompanied himself with was an entirely visual cue: Most likely, the minstrel himself couldn't even hear it. The anxious man shrugged. "Looks all right to me," he said.   
Nick snorted. "Uh huh," he agreed. "It's all right, sure. And the road outside's all right, too. And the road leads to an all right capital in the all right kingdom we're in. What's it get to in the other direction? Mountains? A sleepy seaport? The fortress of an evil, rebellious lord? It doesn't much matter to me, but it's fun to ask. No- one goes that way. The story always takes your worthy heroes first to see the king and then on the grand tour of the kingdom. On some other road, likely as not. Might as well build the road in just one direction the amount of use it gets going the other way --"   
"You can't build a road in just one direction!" the anxious man complained.   
"That's the problem with this place," Nick sighed, gazing with ennui at the shrimp he'd speared in his marinara. "No creativity. No sense of invention. No joie de nouvere."   
"'Nouvere?" The anxious man decided he didn't want to know. "What's your point?" he demanded.   
"Ooh, that's right," Nick said. "I forgot that you're anxious. In a hurry for me to come to the nub of my complaint --"   
"Yes!"   
"My complaint is that this place is completely ordinary and unoriginal. What's parked outside this tavern? Horses -- and if they're not horses, then they're so horsy that they might as well be. They carry travelers just like horses. And what's on tap in that taverner's kegs? Beer, wine and mead. And, again, if they're not, they might as well be. They inebriate like the original. And what's that meat on the spit over there? Cow or pig? I'll bet it ain't dog. All the dogs are present and accounted for running around under the tables just the way you'd expect. The only novelty in this place is my plate of pasta with shrimp marinara and to get that I had to insist that I wouldn't show up at all for this dinner meeting unless the place offered a decent menu."   
"Under the table, please," the anxious young man said. "Your menu, I mean. Would you please keep it out of sight? It's not for the extras. Have you any idea how much it cost to fly in the shrimp for your dinner?"   
"So you pay off a wizard," Nick yawned. "I should care? I should care if this whole mediocre setting gets trashed?"   
"Well, I'm not _trying_ to hire you to be in this story," the anxious man grumbled.   
"Yeah, you're not." Nick grinned. "Which is smart, 'cause I'm a real budget- buster. 'Course, that _was_ the most interesting part of your prospectus. That offer -- that part -- _is_ still on the table, isn't it?"   
The anxious man nodded reluctantly. "But --"   
"But what you _are_ looking for is a red-haired, skinny, young sorceress who's got more magical punch than Merlin, better swordsmanship than D'Artagnan, eats like a horse, has a hair-trigger temper, is a control freak, sports interesting phobias, and doesn't mind spouting pages of plot exposition if the story gets stuck in a tight corner," Nick said.   
"I don't think that's how I described her in the prospectus, but --"   
"I did a little research. You also want her to work for free."   
"Not exactly --"   
"Right! She should take the role for the sheer joy of saving the world from another ultimate evil." Nick took another bite of pasta. "Lina Inverse turned you down, of course. What surprises me is that you're not dead."   
"Yet."   
Nick looked at the anxious man, then gave him another obnoxious grin. "Yeah, not yet. No, I was referring to the polite form of refusal that you seem to've got from Lina."   
"She didn't bother to visit me with it personally," the anxious young man said. "Instead, she caught up with the agent of mine who'd delivered the invitation and let him have it."   
"Wink, wink, nudge, nudge. A slam's as good as an asphyxiation..."   
"He got both, actually. The ... uh ... Guildmaster of Thieves in this town won't be making any appearances except wrapped up head to foot in bandages."   
"Lina's had characters do that before," Nick conceded. "So this burg has a 'Thieves Guild.'" He looked heavenward. "Why am I not surprised? But I am wondering why the guildmaster was running errands for you."   
"Quid pro quo. He did me a favor of running the errand and I promised him a named part and, if things went well, the likelihood of having some lines and even a chance to chew scenery."   
"Sounds like he got screwed," Nick decided. "And there isn't a snowball's chance in hell of the thieves guild appearing while the story's in this town, right?"   
"Doesn't seem to be working out that way," the anxious man conceded. "Not with the Guildmaster as laid up as he is."   
"You're my kind of guy," Nick admired.   
"I have to be," the anxious man said. "I'm producing this show."   
"Good point, but what about these gross errors in judgement you've made? I mean, you cast _yourself_ in the thing? As Fathead the Thief?"   
"That's Fafred the Thief. I -- that is, Fafred -- is playing Zelgadis the Sorcerer."   
"These shell characters --"   
"Not!" the anxious man interrupted. Nick glared at him. "It's quite simple and nothing like a shell corporation --"   
"I said 'characters.'"   
"But I know what you meant. It doesn't apply. Fafred the Thief is my alter ego around here and he's very three-dimensionally realized. I've spent a lot of time on his background and motives -- lots of role-playing sessions --"   
"I like the way the pervasive, unrelenting smoke has blackened the ceilings in here so realistically," Nick said in a bored monotone, gazing upward.   
The anxious man glared at his guest. "Anyway, Fafred's playing Zelgadis --"   
Who's a stone-skinned chimera."   
"-- After another make-up miracle. Look, I'll admit that that casting was pure vanity. But Fafred is the best character I've ever assumed. See, I steal stuff, sure, but only from obnoxious rich people who can afford the loss --"   
"They'll just collect the insurance."   
"Uh, right."   
"There is no insurance," Nick sighed. "Insurance requires a modern financial infrastructure in order to support the concept of spreading risk -- but I digress. So Fathead has to get a part in this story because otherwise you wouldn't be interested in producing the thing. Is that right?"   
"Pretty much. And it's _Fafred_. But you see, what's poignant about my vicarious life as Fafred is that I was forced into my life of crime in order to get enough food for my little sister --"   
"I'm sure it's a touching good story," Nick interrupted. "But if you've ever been around a polygony of role-playing gamers, I'm sure you'll understand where I'm coming from when I tell you that I make it a policy to ask _everyone_ I encounter please, _NOT_ to tell me about their characters."   
"Huh?"   
"And even if you have no idea what I'm talking about, you'll be touching the heartstrings of readers and fellow characters with your backstory soon enough. So I'd rather you didn't warm up that speech on me. What I want to know is, did you truly neglect to include a backdoor to your participation in this little extravaganza in case things got a little sticky?"   
"Of course not. There's a backdoor."   
"It just doesn't open," Nick suggested. Fafred failed to disagree. "What happened? Did you find an enemy you never knew you had?"   
"The Guildmaster of Assassins in _The Mongoose of Atreus_," Fafred snarled. "She had a younger brother who does cyberpunk and decided that I needed a little payback. The backdoor got warped in its frame and won't open for anything less than -- something _really_ destructive. I'm not even sure what it'd take. So now this place is humming away with a plot to destroy the world and no heroes to stop the plot and I can't get out."   
"You started the plot before you made sure that you had all the necessary characters lined up," Nick tsked.   
"Well, yeah!" the anxious man said. "The plot to destroy the world always needs development time before the heroes become aware of it and then rally around to stop it. I figured to get that development out of the way while I finished casting, since the heroes in this production are pretty well known --"   
"And getting shanghaied from their proper production house."   
"The proper production house isn't meeting demand --"   
"Which is insatiable. So you dove in and then discovered that you've forgotten how to swim."   
"Well, forgot to make sure that my ladder out of the pool would remain functional as long as I needed," Fafred admitted.   
"You're really straining the metaphor."   
"Occupational hazard -- producers always do that." Fafred shrugged. "Yes, Nick, I made some really big mistakes -- but that's in character 'cause Fafred's Wisdom score is down in the single digits."   
"Kind of risky sinking that deeply into your character," Nick observed.   
"For the true actor, it's the only way to go."   
"Feet first, on a gurney -- so, OK, Fathead, you're still looking to hire someone to play Lina, right?"   
"Right, but I've got the rest of the cast lined up," Fafred said eagerly. "Finally. Zelgadis'll be great and I've got someone truly awesome to handle Amelia. I think the Gaurry'll work out --"   
"And I think we can wait on sharing all that information until you actually roll the obligatory introductory bar-room scene," Nick said loudly. "You are going to have one, aren't you?"   
"It's obligatory."   
"Right, so all you need is your Lina -- for cheap."   
"Please: For really inexpensive."   
"Sure. How about this?" 

Nick reached past his plate of pasta to the middle of the table, then plunged his hand down through the surface as if it were of water.   
"Neat trick," Fafred admired.   
"Yeah, thanks," Nick grunted. "Good for making folks wonder if they haven't had a Pangalactic Gargleblaster or two too many." He seemed to feel around under (or through) the table and soon found what he was looking for. "Got her!" he exclaimed, and pulled his hand back up through the table. He was holding a Barbie-sized doll -- except that the doll was moving -- struggling in his grip. She also screamed.   
"Quiet!" Nick barked at the doll. "It's me."   
The doll, an awfully lifelike and lively rendition of a naked girl, twisted around to look at Nick.   
"Oh," she said, apparently recognizing him. "I am _not_ relieved."   
"This," Nick explained to Fafred, "is Quorinelya Tierce, hereinafter to be referred to as QT."   
"I hate that!" the small girl said.   
"I'm still amazed that your parents gave you a name with those initials," Nick said.   
"It was a long time ago and people acronymed a lot less back then. They also assumed that a girl would change her name when she got married. So I wasn't going to be QT forever." The girl made a face at the way that came out, then sighed. "So why'd you grab me? Hey!"   
"What do you think, Fathead?" Nick asked, dangling the doll over his pasta. "How about QT here for the sorceress in this story?"   
The producer studied Nick's prize as, gripping her by her wrists, Nick held her suspended over his dinner. Being naked and attractive (though no Barbie) she was quite pleasant to study. She was pink and lithe, the feminine lines being subtle, rather than full. Her tiny face was exquisitely detailed, framing relatively large blue eyes, a small nose and wide mouth -- which right now was spouting a stream of aggrieved invective against her captor. QT's hair wasn't scarlet; it was a light brown which could no doubt be easily adjusted. Indeed, the girl seemed very well shaped to play Lina Inverse. Her main drawback, though was quite obvious.   
"You're trying to market at an awfully deep discount," Fafred observed. "Lina's more than one foot tall."   
"I'm thirteen inches!" the girl called out. "And I would like to --"   
Lina's more than _two_ feet tall," Fafred revised his requirement.   
"I thought the specsheet said she was short," Nick grinned.   
"Yeah, but the scale's still human."   
"OK, OK. That can be fixed," Nick said.   
"On a rack?"   
"Magic," Nick said. "She _is_ a sorceress."   
"Oh. OK, that fits the part, at least." Fafred considered. "Lina usually wears clothes --"   
"Always, you mean," Nick said.   
"Not that there's anything wrong with leaving them off," Fafred quickly added.   
"_I_ think there is," the small girl declared. "Nick, I would like to dress -- now!"   
"Uh huh. Doesn't sound like there should be any problem with the control freak part," Fafred decided, while Nick set the girl down on the table. She gestured and was almost instantly clothed in a dress.   
"That's not right," Fafred said.   
"True," Nick agreed, inspecting the tiny girl critically.   
"She should be wearing a pink half-sleeve jerkin and hose, yellow halter and big brown boots," Fafred said. "A pink cape too. Plus accessories -- uh, belt, sword, pouches, that sort of thing."   
"I'm _trying_ to get noticed?" the small girl asked.   
"Well, _yes!_" Fafred told her. "And your hair needs to be a lot longer, and curly. And scarlet."   
"Almost but not quite matching my clothing?"   
Fafred and Nick looked at each other. Both shrugged. "Something like that," Fafred said. "And she needs to be a lot bigger than that, remember."   
"I thought --" Nick began.   
Fafred's anxiety returned. Quickly, he said, "You know: Taller?"   
"Huh?" the little girl said.   
"I told you she'd deal with that," Nick said. "But later. Kerry," he said to the small girl, "fix the rest."   
"I'll try," the tiny girl said. She gestured several times. First, her clothing changed to something more like what Fafred said that Lina Inverse usually wore. It still wasn't right, but was pretty good for a production that had zilch in the costuming budget. Then her hair turned red and lengthened. "Better?" the girl asked.   
"Yeah," Fafred said. "Now about your height..."   
"OK, OK." The girl got to her feet and then ran around the edge of the table until she found an unoccupied chair. She hopped down to the chair, seated herself in the middle -- and then expanded. Within seconds she was roughly Lina-sized. Still sitting, she sprawled against the back of her chair. "That's pretty tiring," she sighed. "So Nick, _why_ am I here?"   
"Fathead here needs someone to play the part of Lina Inverse in his production of a story titled, 'Dark Crystaline Eschaton.'"   
"Oh," the girl said, without enthusiasm. "And you're picking on me because..."   
Nick shrugged. "Because I can. And because Lina Inverse is a sorceress."   
"And Lina Inverse isn't playing Lina Inverse because...?"   
"Other contractual obligations," Nick said airily.   
"Fathead couldn't make a deal with her?"   
"It's Fafred!"   
"Sorry." The girl turned her big blue eyes on the producer. "I only know what people tell me, and he called you --"   
"I know what he called me," Fafred snapped. "He can call me that because I'm trying to get a favor from him. I don't think you have that privilege."   
The girl started to say something, then looked warily at Nick.   
Nick gave her a cold smile. "You're going to play Lina Inverse the sorceress. It'll be fun."   
"For whom?"   
Nick's eyes twinkled. Although the appearance was similar, Quorinelya knew Nick too well to think that his glee had any spiritual rememblance to Santa Claus's. "Seriously, Nick," she insisted. "What's in this for you? There's got to be something."   
Nick's smile broadened. "Fathead _says_ there's a part in it for me -- if I want it."   
Quorinelya looked aghast. "For you?" she choked.   
"As Xelloss," Fafred explained. "It's a _special_ part actually. Not much stage time as written, but --"   
"-- that could change, if I feel like it," Nick finished.   
"Um..."   
"You want a favor from me or don't you?"   
"The part could change radically, depending on how things go," Fafred surrendered.   
"So I could be stuck in some production where you get free rein to torment me?" Quorinelya asked Nick.   
"Now you know what's in it for me," Nick told her smugly.   
"But Lina -- I mean, Kerry." Fafred made a grab for Quorinelya's attention. "This is such a great opportunity for you. Lina's the starring role! You get to save the world!"   
"I what?!"   
"Lina's a very powerful sorceress -- except during that time of the month. You command lots of powerful magicks and are also wicked with the sword you're carrying --" He glanced down at the girl's minimal hips. "Uh, where's your sword?"   
"I'm a _girl_ --"   
"Not that," Nick said quickly. "Like this." He snapped his fingers and a bladed weapon appeared in his hand.   
"Oh, that." The girl sounded less than thrilled. "Have you any idea how much work it is conjuring up something like that."   
"Well, yeah," Nick said. "Since I just did it."   
"I was talking to Fat -- Fafred here," the girl told him.   
"But if you had one all the time, you wouldn't have to conjure it," Fafred said.   
"Actually," the girl sighed, "I do have one, but I can summon it only once a day and only for as long as I'm holding it in my hand. Other than that, no sword."   
"What do you do the rest of the time?" Fafred asked.   
"Run away, mostly."   
"Yeah," Fafred decided. "Lina can do that -- occasionally. Look, QT, you have to understand that Lina is very powerful."   
"Seriously very powerful?" the girl asked.   
"Oh yeah!" Fafred told her. "A whole brigand of bandits is nothing to her. She took 'em all on alone."   
"Oh." The girl turned to Nick. "How many bandits in a brigand?" she asked.   
"A lot," Nick replied. "But don't worry: The precise, large number was just for dramatic effect."   
"Uh huh." The girl turned back to Fafred. "He _has_ told you I'm a complete wimp, right? Like, if you think I'm going to bring off a story that has this Lina saving the world, the world is facing some _very_ long odds."   
"Well, of course the world is facing some very long odds," Fafred said. "The world's always facing some very long odds when it's up to some lone adventuring hero (or heroine) to stop the big bad thing that's going to destroy everything."   
"Uh, yeah -- but this here world is facing odds that are even skimpier than the usual needle-thin chances."   
"Sort of like visualizing you as Lina instead of the original, I guess," Nick mused.   
"She's really not that bad," Fafred declared.   
"Oh gee, thanks for the stouthearted compliment," the girl grumbled at Fafred. "And since I haven't seen the original, I can't comment --"   
"There's a wanted poster of her over on the wall over there," Fafred said absently.   
"A wanted poster?!" Quorinelya exclaimed.   
"Starting her right behind the ol' eight-ball, are we?" Nick asked Fafred mildly.   
"It's not as bad as it sounds," Fafred said. "And the drawing is actually pretty good. See, Lina -- that's you -- has upset some high mucky-mucks in this country's Wizardry Guild because she was teaching a student some new magicks without charging proper Guild rates. So they want to question her about this matter."   
"I see," Quorinelya said. "And is it true that Lina was doing this illegal teaching?"   
"Well, yes. It was to your friend."   
"Oh how nice: I have a friend. And what's the punishment that the Guild metes out for this infraction of the rules?"   
"They chop you up into small pieces and feed you to their Swottish Lizards."   
"Oh. Nice to know they're so concerned about the integrity of their educational program. But I missed it: In what way is this wanted poster not as bad as it sounds?"   
"Well," Fafred considered. "They kill you _before_ they chop you up." 

* * *

Story copyright 2002 Alan Lauderdale, modelled characters belong to H. Kanzaka / R. Araizumi.


	2. 1. Nike!

** Quorinelya Tierce and the --   
Sorry...   
Dark Crystaline Eschaton **

1. Nike! The Obligatory Tavern Scene  


  
Looking as much like Lina Inverse as she could manage on a costume and makeup budget that amounted to nothing, Quorinelya Tierce was sitting at a table in an obligatory tavern across from a blonde, handsome, very muscular guy. He was to enjoy gazing at, except for one small issue: The table was laden with dishes of food and the very muscular guy was digging in without _any_ reservation.   
"So, you're Gourry the Chivalrous?" Quorinelya asked, poking at something on one of the platters. Whatever it was, it had been very heavily glazed.   
The man shook his head. He did so vigorously, since this did not require any interruption to his eating. "Gaurry the Chivalrous," he corrected her. This also didn't require him to interrupt eating, though perhaps he should've anyway.   
Quorinelya wiped her face. "Isn't that what I said?" she asked.   
"Nope," the man said. "You asked for Gourry, but I'm Gaurry. They had to rewrite my part."   
"Really?"   
"Uh huh. See, someone got a really nasty lawyer for Gourry --"   
"How come no-one ever does favors like that for me?"   
Her tablemate ignored this existential query. "-- so he's completely unavailable for this story. I'm someone completely different from him."   
"Can you give me an example?"   
"Well..." Gaurry considered long and hard. "I think Gourry likes tomatoes, but I like tomatoes."   
"Uh huh." Quorinelya sighed. "I think that joke worked better on the audio track. But there's a balance to everything --"   
"There is?"   
"Yup: The name change is much clearer in print."   
"Oh. Well, at least I look just like him."   
"So the visuals will be a match."   
"For sure. I'm so close that I've had work as Gourry's stunt double."   
"Really?"   
"Yup. So I've had a chance to sit with him and talk about the character -- you know, motivation and everything."   
"Wow. So what is it?"   
"What's what?"   
"Your motivation and everything?"   
"Oh! Well, I'm here as your protector. I'll keep anything bad from happening to you --"   
"Oh, well, that's all right, then."   
"-- except if the script, the plot, or dramatic imperatives require otherwise."   
"A loophole through which you could move a medium-sized army," Quorinelya sighed. She drummed her fingers and looked around for Nick, so that she could thank him yet again for this marvelous thing which he'd done to her. 

Gaurry's voice got conspiratorally soft. "Uh, Lina, I think you're supposed to be eating most of this food."   
Quorinelya stared at the spread. "Are you kidding?" she exclaimed. "Eat all of this?"   
"I thought it was pretty clearly described on pages 3 to 36 of the script."   
"Thirty three pages?"   
"They had to detail this for props. And see, I get this shepherd's pie -- the one that's kind of crispy because it was closest to the fire. But you're supposed to chow down these other two. And I think we split the celery casserole pretty evenly. That roast beef is all yours, though you let me have a quarter of the Yorkshire pudding to help me keep my strength up --"   
"This _is_ a fantasy story, isn't it? Look, Gourry --"   
"Gaurry."   
"Right. Sorry. Look, Gaurry, I can't eat all that. I can't eat _any_ of that.   
"Really, you should. We're in the expensive obligatory tavern and this is the good stuff. See, the script says that something's going to come up that'll keep us from paying for it."   
"Really? Does it say what?"   
"It's a little sketchy, but I think we're going to have an obligatory bar-room brawl with some bad guy named Adlib."   
"Oh."   
"Come on, Lina," Gaurry said. "Dig in. Everyone's expecting you to chow down seriously. Didn't you read your character description?"   
"Actually," Quorinelya admitted, "no. Nick never did show it to me. He and Fafred told me I was playing the part, end of story. Little questions like, could I play it _well_ just never came up."   
"All right, but couldn't you stuff your face even a little?"   
"It's going to be really pathetic," Quorinelya warned him.   
"Why?" Gaurry asked. "I mean, you must have a metabolism that motors."   
"It does, but..." Quorinelya sighed and then disappeared from Gaurry's sight.   
"Hey!"   
Then, a tiny Lina leapt up onto the table from her chair. She made her way between the platters to the middle of the table.   
"So, how much do you think I could stuff into myself looking like this?" she asked Gaurry, who was staring at her.   
"Uh, one Brussels sprout?"   
Quorinelya considered, then nodded. "I guess so -- if it's a small one and I'm not in a hurry. But not much more than that."   
"But if you get back to normal size --"   
"This _is_ my normal size," Quorinelya interrupted.   
"Like that?" Gaurry asked.   
"Like this," Quorinelya said. "And when I pump myself up to Lina-size, my stomach doesn't get any bigger. That's part of why I look like a stick. So..." She looked around at the platters of food and sighed, then grabbed a knife and attacked the Yorkshire pudding.   
"Been ages since I've had some of this," she said. "Take that, thou confection of cream, lard and egg!"   
"Uh, Lina," Gaurry said. "I think your agent over-reacted to the bigness stuff in Lina's specs."   
Quorinelya shrugged. "What bigness stuff?" she wondered. "I told you: I never got to read the sheet."   
"Uh, right. So..." Gaurry eyed the roast beef. "You're just going to have that portion of the pudding?"   
"I've taken an awful lot of it," Quorinelya admitted, considering the quivering lump before her. "But, yeah. It really doesn't matter what, in particular, I eat, anyway..." She gestured at the pudding and told it, "north country ambrosia."   
"Huh?   
"Whatever it is, I have to magick it anyway," Quorinelya said. "So it's OK with me if you want the roast --"   
The roast beef vanished.   
"-- beef. Wow." 

Fafred, wearing a thick coating of mottled gray makeup, sidled up to the table. "Oh," he said to Gaurry. "You're starting before Lina got here?"   
"Uh..." Gaurry glanced at Quorinelya, who was still working on her lump of yorkshire pudding.   
"Mmmph," Quorinelya said, then tried to swallow quickly.   
A man, reeking of beer and the farmyard, came up to the table. "Now?" he asked.   
"Not yet," Fafred told him, in what could best be described as a stage whisper. "I only just got here."   
"Oh. Sorry." The man wandered away.   
Quorinelya glanced at his retreating back, then shrugged. "Hi, Fat -- uh, Faf -- I mean, Zelgadis," she said. "Sorry," she added.   
Fafred glared at her. "First off, Lina never apologizes unless there is absolutely no way that she can avoid it," he chided her.   
"Oh," Quorinelya said. She paused, then said, "I guess that's the way it goes, then."   
Fafred considered, then said, "Better. Second, you cannot be that small and play Lina. Lina is a commanding presence wherever she goes --"   
"In this color scheme, definitely," Quorinelya said.   
"Never mind the colors," Fafred snarled. "You're too small."   
Gaurry cringed.   
"Tough," Quorinelya said. "My size isn't something I'd apologize for any time and right now it seems I need to practice being bitchy. So you can take your 'too small' complaints and buzz off. Why's Gaurry cringing?" she added.   
"Because you should've walloped Zelgadis with some really painful spell for calling you flat-chested," Gaurry told her.   
"But he called me _small_."   
"Yeah, well, Lina's kind of sensitive about her appearance," Gaurry said. "Any comment about how you look manages to get reduced to br-- converted! I meant, it gets converted to breast size."   
Quorinelya stared at Gaurry, then looked down at herself. "OK, but there's really no there there, is there?" she conceded.   
Fafred swatted his forehead. Gaurry gagged on the loaf of bread he'd bitten into.   
"So -- huh?" Quorinelya asked.   
Gaurry coughed. The farmhand came back.   
"Now?" he asked.   
Fafred shrugged. "We may yet manage to salvage this scene and actually advance the plot," he mused. The farmhand stared at him. "Not yet," the producer finally declared. The farmhand wandered away again.   
Gaurry said, "You are really having a problem with getting into character, aren't you, Lina?"   
"Looks that way," the tiny girl sighed.   
"Look which way?" another girl asked.   
Quorinelya glanced at her. She was petite -- but still within normal human parameters for size. She had blue eyes and fairly short, black hair. She was dressed in a beige, short sleeved dress. There was something reserved and distinguished about her. Perhaps it was aristocracy; perhaps it was just snootiness. "Who are you?" Quorinelya asked.   
"I'm Malehelicon," the girl said. "Patron Muse of bad fan fiction --"   
"Helix..." Fafred warned.   
"--and I've always wanted actually to be _in_ one of these productions and I think it'll be just so kewl actually to play one of the actual, legendary Slayers --"   
"You're on camera now," Fafred reminded her.   
"-- Oops!" Malehelicon turned beet red, but only for a moment. Swiftly she struggled to return to character. "I am the Lady Princess Amelia Wil Tesla Saillune, 2nd Crown Princess of Seyrunn," she said as though reading her place card at a formal dinner. "I'm very well known, actually...." Quorinelya shrugged.   
"Oh, hi Amelia," Gaurry said, belatedly picking up the cue. He glanced at the girl. "Hungry?"   
"Why would I not be afflicted with the pangs of an evacuated stomach?" the girl asked. "But surely, you and Lina will partake of the entirety of this feast? Uh, where is Lina, anyway? I thought I heard --"   
"Here," Quorinelya waved.   
"I'm sorry -- _You're_ Lina?"   
"Would you please grow up?" Zelgadis pleaded to Quorinelya. The tiny sorceress glanced at the moonlighting Muse while Amelia took a moment to stare back. "She's myopic," Fafred hissed. "So it would help her a lot if you could, you know..."   
"Myopic?" Quorinelya repeated.   
"Centuries of deciphering godawful handwriting," Malehelicon complained. "And having to do it by the light of guttering candles and dying lamps -- usually in those damned unheated garrets and attics that the aspiring writers always seemed to think would keep their art authentic." She sighed. "And then there's reading the deathless prose on computer monitors -- on second-hand or refurbished or just plain misconfigured computer monitors. Listen honey, my eyes are _shot_!"   
Fafred sighed. "Offline, Helix," he suggested.   
"Oops! Sorry!" Malehelicon made herself aristocratic again.   
"And Lina, you're too damned small --"   
"I suppose I should be infuriated by that remark also, shouldn't I?" Quorinelya purred.   
"Yup," Gaurry said shortly, then attacked his own plateload again.   
"So I should toast -- uh, Zelgadis here, for implying that I'm a little girl?" Quorinelya continued.   
"Definitely -- I mean, absolutely _not!_" Amelia declared. "Because it is the truth: You are awfully little. Lina Inverse, what peculiar spell have you been experimenting with that you should make of yourself such minusculicity?"   
Quorinelya stared at her. "Minusculicity?" she asked.   
"Noun form of the adjective minuscule," Amelia said quickly. "OK, so my rhetorical flourish was struggling there. Just answer the question: How come you're so small?"   
Quorinelya shrugged. "A girl's got to eat," she said.   
"Huh?"   
"It's the answer to your question," Quorinelya told Amelia. "You asked for it."   
"Yes, but --" Amelia took a moment to appreciate the scene: Zelgadis was standing with arms folded, glowering at Lina. Lina was standing on the table only a little more than a foot tall. Surrounding Lina was uneaten food -- though, Gaurry (that bastion of consistency) was making some significant headway in his solitary mission to make it all disappear. While she was appreciating this, the farmhand came back.   
"Now --?"   
"No!" Fafred shouted at him. "There's a cue for you. You should know what your cue is. When it comes, _then_ you come over."   
"Oh --"   
"Lina," Amelia wailed, having decided that the dramatically appropriate moment had arrived, "have you decided to diet?"   
"Was that my cue?" the farmhand asked. 

Click to continue... 

Story copyright 2001 Alan Lauderdale, characters copyright H. Kanzaka / R. Araizumi.


	3. 2: Direction!

** Quorinalia Tierce is Lina Inverse  
in   
Cut Rate Slayers   
Dark Crystaline Eschaton **

2: Direction! How hard can planned mayhem be?   


  


* * *

  
The food was all gone and Gourry (played by Gaurry) delivered himself of a substantial and satisfied belch. All seemed pretty close to right with the world, loosely speaking.   
"Now that the pangs of hunger have been sated for the nonce..." Amelia declared. (Amelia was being played, with a real flair for improvising tiresome speeches just the way the real Amelia could, by Malehelicon, the patron Muse of Bad Fanfics.) She glanced at Gaurry and, more uncertainly at the foot-tall form of Lina Inverse (being played -- badly -- by Quorinelya Tierce, microsorceress), who was wrapped in a napkin and propped up on the table against a salt cellar and sugar bowl. Lina's eyes were closed and her diminutive belly did look as though she might've ingested an entire brussels sprout. "...It is the hour for recounting glorious chronicles of noble deeds of yore --"   
"Such as will have some bearing on the latest threat to the wellbeing of the whole world?" Zelgadis murmured. (Zelgadis was played by Fafred the Wunderkind -- who also happened to be the producer of the present tale.) He was sitting on a chair with his feet up on another, contemplating the glorious authenticity of his boots.   
"Unless the script's had a rewrite I don't know about," Malehelicon said.   
"We'll just have to hope it's nothing significant," Fafred muttered.   
"What?"   
"Nothing. So what glorious chronicle did you think to grace us with this evening?"   
"One of my favorites," Amelia said, producing a dogeared stack of computer printout from under the table. "A clever little pastiche entitled 'The Eye of Argon' --"   
There was a sudden breeze. Amelia looked around the empty room -- empty except for Amelia herself and Lina Inverse, whose eyes were still closed and who hadn't moved.   
"That's what I call deep sleeping," Amelia said to herself. "Just kidding," she called out.   
"That's good," Zelgadis said, coming back into the room. "Because before I'd let you actually start reading that piece, I'd've cued the farmhand. That story doesn't have anything to do with this world or our problems, anyway."   
"But the archetypal themes!" Amelia exclaimed. "The powerful hero who battles alone against uttermost evil --"   
Everyone regarded Quorinelya, who was sprawled on the table against the sugar bowl. Her eyes were still closed and her mouth was slightly slack. There was a droplet of spittle at the corner of her mouth.   
"'Powerful hero,'" Zelgadis said, nodding. "That really resonates with what we've got here."   
"What about Gourry?" Amelia asked.   
"Too smart --" Zelgadis said.   
"Whoah!" Gaurry exclaimed. "I'm too smart to be in the Eye of Argon?"   
"I know," Zelgadis said. "It's a demoralizing thing to learn you're overqualified for a part."   
"Especially when it's as famous a work of literature as 'The Eye of Argon'," Amelia sympathized.   
"Infamous," Zelgadis corrected.   
"You have no soul."   
"Perhaps not," Zelgadis shrugged. "But I have a thesaurus that _distinguishes_ among all the synonyms it lists. Now, the Eye of Argon is in no way any kind of inspiration for the dire future that this world risks plummeting into --"   
"What about the scarlet emerald whose baleful gleam will sparkle from Seyruun to --?"   
"That was an in-joke, _before_ the script got proof-read. Well before. There's nothing like that in our peril now."   
"Only a copper quartz?"   
"Where?!"   
Amelia shrugged. "All right. I have this other story --"   
"So what about this copper quartz?" Gaurry asked.   
"Shut up, Gaurry!" both Amelia and Zelgadis told him. "If we ignore it, it might go away," Zelgadis added.   
"So we want it to go away?" Gaurry asked. He was regarded in silence. "Well, that wasn't obvious to _me_," he complained.   
"Another story," Amelia said flatly. Zelgadis nodded. "All right. It borrows a little --"   
"So it's plagiarism from start to finish?" Zelgadis asked.   
"The title is 'The Last Platinum Dragon'."   
"And I think we can guess how it goes."   
"Yes, but shouldn't we wake _her_ up for the telling?"   
"Why?"   
"Are you kidding? She's little miss know-it-all. If she isn't the one who's totally briefed on the monster of the week that we're fighting or the artifact of the hour that we're excavating or delivering or whatever, then she absolutely pitches a hissy fit. I'd rather not experience that, if you don't mind. The 13,277 that I've had to _read_ about Lina throwing were bad enough."   
"Yeah, but this would be a really small one," Gaurry suggested.   
"Nevertheless..." Amelia said.   
"Yeah, all right," Zelgadis agreed. "She ought to be awake for this anyway." He reached out with his stonier-looking hand and prodded Quorinelya.   
Rolling over inside her napkin wrapping, Quorinelya said, "The Last Platinum Dragon lived by herself deep in the heart of the woods."   
"Oh, so you've heard this one," Amelia said. She sounded disappointed.   
"You could say that," Quorinelya murmured against the table.   
"And you're awake already," Gaurry suggested.   
"More or less." The tiny Lina Inverse sat up. "What'd the Red Bull become?"   
Frowning, Amelia said, "The Black Mazoku."   
"So the Last Platinum Dragon freed all of her kind from the prison which the Black Mazoku had constructed for them and they all lived happily ever --"   
"Not exactly," Amelia interrupted. "The original tale of the Last Platinum Dragon doesn't end conclusively. Rather, the end of the original text has Finila bidding her friends adieu and flying away alone to do battle with the Black Mazoku."   
"That doesn't sound very promising for platinum dragons," Quorinelya said.   
"Well, she was the _Last_ Platinum Dragon," Gaurry pointed out.   
"Uh huh." Lina sighed. "So, how about if we declare The Last Platinum Dragon read into the record and adjourn for the evening?"   
"But I haven't even begun --"   
"You were _not_ going to read the whole thing, anyway." Lina glared at the princess.   
"Well, no... Not _all_ of it ..."   
"And we've got the gist of it," Lina said cheerfully. "End of story hour. Where's my room?"   
The man who reeked of beer and the farmyard returned to the group's table. "Now?" he asked.   
"Not. Yet," Fafred told him. "That brawl isn't scheduled until the story's about to leave the tavern for good. We're not quite to that point -- but, boy! Am I tempted."   
The farmhand wandered away. "My room?" Lina prompted.   
Still watching the farmhand's retreat, Zelgadis suddenly put his hands to his face. "Damn!" he exclaimed. "I forgot! This mudpack simply isn't working out and I'd made an appointment with an expert in chimeras to discuss options -- that sort of thing. Gaurry, can you finish putting this scene to bed? There's a good chap. Thanks -- and all of you, what you're doing is simply marvelous! Couldn't've asked for better if I'd asked for it. Love you all!" He ran out of the room. The others remained in silence a moment. Then Lina turned to Gourry.   
"There's something really, really bad about my room," she told him. "What is it?"   
Gourry looked the way he always did: confused. "Nothing," he said.   
"You're sure?"   
"Sure, I'm sure," Gourry said. "I mean, if there were anything really, really bad about your room, I'm sure that Amelia would've told us about it."   
"_I_ would've told you!" Amelia exclaimed. "Why would I have told you?"   
"Because it's your room, too."   
"_I_ have to share my room with _her_?" Amelia wailed.   
"Excuse me," Lina said. "_I_ am the star of this piece, am I not? So, _I_ have to share my room with _her_? Is this another pennypinching gimmick?"   
"No, no, of course not," Gourry said quickly.   
"Then what is it?" Lina asked saccharinely.   
"Well, uh, you know, we're just traveling through towns and staying at strange inns and taverns and uh, beautiful ladies like you two ..."   
"So that rat Fathead thinks I'm going to babysit the shrimp here?" Amelia asked.   
"Who's babysitting whom, you syntactically challenged twerp?" Lina bridled. "And you," she turned back to Gourry. "You don't think we're perfectly able to take care of ourselves?"   
"Of course _I_ think you are," Gourry said quickly. "But the management here, they have these Ideas." He sighed. "See, you're a princess," he said to Amelia. "They, unfortunately, know that. Fafred blabbed about it trying to see if he could get rooms for royalty rates. So now, the innkeeper is all in a swivit about the possibility of having a princess abducted while she's under his roof. He wouldn't rent the room at all unless you were accompanied."   
"Did anyone mention to him that having Lina in the room with me would increase rather than decrease the likelihood of something disastrous happening?" Amelia asked.   
"He'd rather take that chance."   
"Why don't I get that choice?!"   
"And why don't you go bunk down in her room, then?" Lina suggested.   
"Oh, I _like_ that idea," Amelia exclaimed.   
"Uh, I don't know that that's such a good ..." Gourry quickly declared, his face reddening.   
Lina looked back and forth between the two. "Interesting," she murmured. "Well," she said to Gourry, "I hear the floor's tolerable if you've got a shtick about honor. I want my own room."   
"You can't have it," Gourry said flatly. "They've had a problem in the past with gangs of teenage dwarves trashing rooms after their feasts. So, now they've got a rule requiring you to be more than this tall in order to rent a room." He put out his palm at least two feet above the floor.   
Lina looked at the hand. "That's discriminatory," she complained.   
"Yeah, well, it's _legal_ discrimination in _this_ town. The dwarven parents are also tired of paying the bills. Besides, the fixtures are all the wrong size. You'll need help --"   
"I'd still need the help if I'm quartered with Amelia."   
"I'm not helping _her_!"   
Lina glared at Amelia. "Whatever happened to love and justice?" the tiny sorceress asked.   
"Love and justice is one thing. Babysitting is another."   
"Too bad," Gourry said. "The rules are the rules. Both of you need each other. Deal with it." With that, he ran for it.   
Lina glared at the door the swordsman had fled through. Then, she looked up at Amelia. She sighed. "Look," she said. "How about if we go look at the room? See how crowded it makes us feel. Honestly, I'm too tired for arguing with you about it. Complaining at Gourry was different, but this -- Let's just go see." Amelia nodded glumly. 

Later, lying in bed and gazing up at darkness before going to sleep, Lina decided that the arrangement was bad, but not _that_ bad. True, the room was small. True, there was only one small bed in the room. And true, Amelia didn't seem to be one to travel very light. Her gear was all over the room.   
But Quorinelya's stuff complemented Amelia's, since the tiny sorceress had absolutely nothing while the princess had a surfeit. So the small room was not quite overcrowded with stuff. And Quorinelya had to be small in order to sleep, so she was taking up very little space in the bed. The only problem, the tiny sorceress decided, was one that she'd encountered before. And she'd managed to live with it then, so why not now? It was demeaning, perhaps, but -- Quorinelya felt the fingers curled loosely around herself and sighed -- Amelia probably hadn't meant anything personal by it when she'd sighed drowsily and murmured, "G'night, Teddy Snookums." 

* * *

Story copyright 2002 Alan Lauderdale; characters these characters are trying to portray are owned (in some legal or quasi- mystical sense) by H. Kanzaka / R. Araizumi.


	4. 3: Gambit!

** Cut Rate Slayers   
Dark Crystaline Eschaton **

3: Gambit! So the world's not going to end this morning!  


  


* * *

  
"Because it's a lot of work pumping myself up to usual human height," Quorinelya told Amelia.   
Amelia (played by the back-up muse, Malehelicon) paused on the stairs down to the tavern common room. She struck a dramatic pose, then said, "But, O Spooker of Dragons, do you deem it a show of adequate gravitas to set yourself to cadging rides on other people's shoulders?"   
Quorinelya bounced herself on Amelia's left shoulder. "Yours is comfortable enough," she said. "Do you have any idea what a pain it can be when everyone in the group you're with decides that they simply refuse to go anywhere except garbed in chainmail?"   
"Are you used to settings with strict dress codes?" Amelia asked.   
Quorinelya shook her head. "I'm talking about having to sit on those metal wires all day," she explained. "And getting your butt caught between the links when the mail shifts under you -- never mind. It's not a problem with this group."   
Amelia resumed descending the stairs. "You're going to stay small, then --"   
"At least until after breakfast."   
"-- and annoy master Zelgadis terribly?"   
"It's his own fault for miscasting the part so badly."   
"You think any fool could play Lina Inverse?"   
"Hardly. I just think I'm scarcely the right fool."   
"Could you please cut that out?" Zelgadis, played by Fafred the Producer and once again clad in pebbles and robes, appeared behind Amelia on the stairs. "Lina never lacks for self-confidence and it really annoys me when you screw up that part of her character."   
Quorinelya glared at him. She surveyed the lumps of mineral-colored plasticene that were scattered across his otherwise gray-painted face and said, "Sod off, doughboy. It's your fault I'm in this mess. Your fault and your gross stupidity in appealing to Nick for help."   
Zelgadis shrugged. "Unlike the rest of the multiverse, he at least responded to my plea for help. Now look: Over breakfast, we're going to set the plot for the Dark Crystalline Eschaton in motion -- don't say anything, Amelia!" he added quickly, as the latter seemed about to launch a speech. "I'm feeling peckish and would like to get to the food before sunset."   
"I am _not_ long-winded," Amelia complained. "I merely bring an element of high drama to these otherwise tedious and pedestrian proceedings."   
"Noted," Zelgadis said. "But this time, let's just walk to breakfast. Now," he added, and, with a sigh, Amelia turned and descended the rest of the stairs. Following behind her, Zelgadis continued to Quorinelya, "And I think that the rest of the cast will find it easier to play their parts if you acted yours as accurately as possible. That means --"   
"I know, I know," Quorinelya interrupted. "Get big. But I've got to get my food first."   
"Why?"   
Quorinelya grimaced, then said to Amelia, "Don't wait for us," before jumping across to Zelgadis's shoulder. "I'm going to repeat something I've already explained to Gaurry --"   
"That's Gourry," Zelgadis interrupted.   
"I thought there were legal issues around that," Quorinelya said.   
"There are," Zelgadis agreed, "but I've been assured by my accountant that Zel has a better chance of seeing a cure for his skin condition than I do of seeing any profit from this fiscal disaster."   
"Oh. Um --?"   
"Since this ain't gonna be commercial, I've therefore decided to go the artistic integrity route."   
"Prepare, Lina, to become totally and hopelessly lost," Amelia declared.   
"Why don't you go suck a grapefruit?" Zelgadis said to the princess.   
"You might as well, Amelia," Quorinelya told her. "I'm just going to explain to Zel why I need to be small at mealtimes. I've already explained that in front of the camera, so it doesn't need to stay here with us. It can come with you."   
Amelia shrugged. "Oh, goody," she said dryly. "We shall record for the ages my conquest of the fruits of the inn. Yippee." She brushed off her shoulder, and then went ahead into the tavern's common room. Gourry was already there and already eating. Amelia gathered some bread and fruit from the sideboard, poured herself some tea and then went to sit with Gourry.   
"Good morrow, Master Gourry," she said to him.   
"Mmmph," he replied.   
"You didn't feel like waiting for anyone else before digging in?" she asked, beginning to quarter her fruit.   
Gourry swigged some tea, then said, "Why should I? I was hungry and it's not like I have to worry now about Lina getting enough to eat. She'll probably eat less than you do in this series."   
"Oh, I don't think she's as radically transformed as that --"   
"Are you going to finish that apple you're eating?" he interrupted.   
Amelia glanced at Gourry's plate. It was almost, but not entirely scraped clean. She glanced at the sideboard; there was still some food there. She looked at her apple; three quarters were as yet untouched, but the question was _so unfair_! "Yes!" Amelia exclaimed. "Yes, I _was_ planning to finish this apple. If you're still hungry, Master Gourry, there's more food still available over --"   
"Lina wouldn't," Gourry said dully. "Not now. She says she isn't good for more than about one brussels sprout at a meal."   
"-- oh." The princess looked around. "What's she going to do?" she asked. "I don't think they serve brussels sprouts at breakfast."   
Gourry didn't have an answer to this question, so he left it unnoticed. "What do you think it is, Amelia?" he asked back. "Some weird wasting disease that only sorceresses get?"   
"Uh, could be, yes," Amelia said. "That is --" Amelia stood up. Lacking any food to distract his attention, Gourry stood up with her. She looked at him. She looked _up_ at him. She looked at his chair.   
"Sorry," he said, sinking back in his seat. "Didn't know which code I should be following."   
"Right," Amelia said dryly. Then, in her most uplifted voice, she said, "Mayhap our most boon companion has indeed been struck by a most fell and obscure malady. Mayhap her humours are misaligned in a manner most strange --"   
"You think something's funny about her?" Gourry asked.   
"Of course something's funny about her!" Amelia exploded. "She's only thirteen inches tall! That's so out of character it isn't funny!"   
"But you just said --"   
"Oh shut up!"   
A pink missile, which was tiny Lina Inverse landed on their table. She rolled briefly, then came up on her feet. She regarded Amelia and Gourry a moment, then asked, "Are you two arguing? I thought you were both too chivalrous and idealistic -- not to mention sweet-tempered -- actually to get into a fight. Except maybe if you had me around to instigate it."   
"Well, you did...sort of..." Gourry mumbled.   
"It was a _discussion_," Amelia said, staring unhappily down at the tiny sorceress. "An impassioned discussion."   
"Oh," the small sorceress said. She regarded Amelia a moment, then asked, "Are you going to finish that apple?"   
"Good ol' Lina!" Gourry exclaimed, while Amelia ground her teeth.   
"I just want one section," Quorinelya said.   
"Oh, go ahead," Amelia told her. "Take both quarters -- I don't mind." She turned and went to the sideboard again. "I shouldn't," she told herself. "It's what the character _ought_ to do -- steal any food I have left on my plate while assessing the edibility of the local crockery. Grrr..." She grabbed a grapefruit that she knew would be sour. Citrus, she felt, was a taste that would match her present mood. 

"In vita major habeo," Quorinelya said absently over the section of apple that she'd picked up.   
"Huh?" Gourry asked.   
"Oh, just concentrating the nutrition in my food," Quorinelya told him, as she began nibbling on her apple quarter. Biting into his own apple, Zelgadis walked up to the table and stood by it chewing apple and glaring at the tiny Lina Inverse.   
"That is just so wrong," he muttered.   
"So what's on for today?" Gourry asked Zel and Lina.   
"We ride forth in the service of truth and justice, of course," Amelia said, returning to the table. She tossed her grapefruit onto her plate and then leapt up onto her chair. Standing on it, she declared, "Where we shall find deception, we shall disperse it with our illumination. Where we shall find oppression, we shall o'erturn it with our equity. Where we shall find aggression, we shall humble it with our luh -- Hey!" The chair broke under her.   
Zelgadis gazed at Amelia, lying on the floor and surrounded by kindling. "I had no idea the set for an obligatory tavern could be _that_ cheap," he said.   
"Still, it sounds like a plan," Quorinelya said. "Are you OK, Amelia?" she asked.   
"Fine," Amelia grumbled, getting to her feet. "Who do I sue?"   
"That's a plan??" Zelgadis asked loudly. "Wandering off aimlessly in search of trouble is a _plan_? Listen, if no-one has anything better to suggest, _I've_ got a plan: I've heard that a priest at the Heights Temple up in the Rakers may be able to help me eradicate my chimerase."   
Gourry sighed loudly. "You're always chasing after rumored cures for that," he said.   
"Yeah, well, you may have noticed that I haven't met with any success, yet," Zelgadis told him.   
"Gee, I don't know," Gourry replied. "_Have_ I noticed that?"   
Cursing under his breath, Zelgadis went for tea. Quorinelya paused her devouring of the apple quarter and said to Gourry, "It's a negative, which, yes, you might not have noticed. But if he'd gotten a cure, you very likely would've noticed _that_ --"   
"Don't be too sure," Amelia said.   
"Sure he would," Quorinelya said. "Something along the lines of 'Hey Zelgadis, there's something different about you... Did you get a haircut?'"   
"I guess that's possible," Amelia conceded. "What _would_ Zelgadis look like if he were cured, anyway?"   
"Better groomed?" Gourry offered.   
Zelgadis interrupted the others' consideration of how a cure might improve him by returning to the table. He was accompanied by a large, muscular man for whom walking was apparently proving a challenge. His face was stubbled and his homespun clothing was disheveled. He smelled of wine and whisky. Amelia shrank away from him.   
"This man would like to speak to the renowned Lina Inverse," Zelgadis explained.   
"Thash rye," the man agreed. "I would like to speak to the re...renow... -- the famush sorsh...sorsher... -- witch, Lina In... -- yuh know 'oo." He wobbled in front of the table, peering at Gourry and Amelia. "Yuh know 'er?"   
"That's me!" Quorinelya called brightly from the surface of the table. She hopped to her feet. "I'm Lina Inverse. Right here. What can I do for you?"   
The man looked down at the tiny girl on the table, wobbling closer for a better look. "You're Lina In...In... -- Uh oh --" He vomited. Then he collapsed on the table, his vomit, and Quorinelya. 

Momentarily stunned, Amelia screamed and leapt away from the mess. Also momentarily stunned, Zelgadis then sprang to pull the drunk man off the mess he'd created. Stunned the longest, Gourry watched, then asked, "Was he attacking Lina?"   
"No," Zelgadis grunted, dragging the man to a comparatively clean portion of the floor. "He's obviously spent the whole night drinking his paycheck and -- "   
"He's getting paid for being in this?" Amelia asked.   
"-- _and_ a whole lot more," Zelgadis emphasized. "Any money he got from me was _very_ nominal. Mostly it went to insurance."   
"I don't think I should be comforted to know that," Gourry said.   
"Just see how Lina is," Zelgadis told him.   
"Can't," Gourry said, after a scan of the table and vicinity that was anything but thorough. "She's not here."   
"She's not?" Amelia asked.   
"You're sure?" Zelgadis added.   
"I really do not want to make sure," Gourry admitted. He stood and backed away from the mess. "Anyone else want to search for her?"   
There was an awkward pause. "Is this part of the plot?" Amelia asked Zelgadis.   
"It is now," he replied. "Wasn't in the last version of the script that _I_ saw, if that's what you're asking."   
"Well..." Amelia looked disgustedly at the mess on and around the table. "This _is_ Lina Inverse we're talking about. We do need to find out what happened to her --" 

"I'm all right," Quorinelya said from the street door of the common room. She was human-sized and cleaned up. Her hair was still wet.   
"That was --" Zelgadis began.   
"Got a bath in the horse-trough outside," Quorinelya said, walking over to the others. "_Very_ invigorating. I don't recommend it. Re-costumed and, since I've had as much breakfast as I think I can stand eating for a while, I made myself look a little more like what you all want to see. Right?" They nodded. "So was that assault or an accident?"   
"You can ask him when he wakes up," Zelgadis told her, indicating the unconscious man.   
Quorinelya looked down at the drunk. "That could be a while, couldn't it?" she asked. "Of course, we're not in any hurry."   
"I suppose not," Zelgadis allowed. "But there's no sense wasting film stock." 

* * *

Late in the afternoon, the common room had long since been cleaned up. The passed out stranger was now lying on one of the tables. Amelia was sitting in a distant corner of the room reading a modern translation of the Claire Bible, which she'd found upstairs in her room. Zelgadis had gone off somewhere to shmooze. Gourry and Quorinelya were sparring using their respective magical swords. After yet another exchange of thrusts and parries that proved nothing except that sleeping drunks can ignore the clatter of a couple of pieces of metal, the pair paused.   
"Well, you're very good at avoiding getting hit," Gourry told Quorinelya.   
"You're holding back, though, aren't you?" she asked him.   
"Not as much as I should be," he said. She frowned. "I mean that you're either holding back too much yourself or you're lousy on the attack. Either way, you're not giving me much to worry about defending against, so I'm not getting punished if I attack sloppily."   
"So..."   
"So you're not a good sparring partner for me," Gourry said.   
"Want to stop?"   
Gourry sheathed his sword. "I'd like our mysterious drunk man to wake up already so that we find out why he wants to talk to you."   
Quorinelya let go of her sword. It vanished. "So let's wake him," she said. "He's snoozed long enough."   
Amelia looked up from her book. "He'll be very cranky if we do that," she warned.   
"He'll just have to control his temper, then," Quorinelya said. "After all, he's the one who wanted the conversation. I wasn't looking for him." She went over to the table he was lying on and tried to shove him awake. "Could use a little help here," she grunted, since the man's bulk was thwarting her.   
"OK..." Gourry came over and rolled the man off the table. He fell onto the floor and stopped snoring. After a stunned moment, he grumbled a curse.   
Quorinelya nudged him with her foot. "You wanted to talk to me," she said.   
"Later," the man moaned.   
"Now," Quorinelya corrected him. "You wanted to talk to Lina Inverse, remember? Not a good idea to go trying to get an interview with someone like her. Even less smart to go throwing up on her when you do finally get to see her. And worst of all is keeping her waiting while you sleep the day away. Do you _want_ to have slimy green skin and have to sit around in duckponds for the rest of your life?"   
"Gods, no," the man moaned. "I just ..." Carefully, the man got up on hands and knees. He looked up at Quorinelya. "I threw up on you?" he asked. Quorinelya nodded. "Sorry about that," the man mumbled.   
"Yeah," Quorinelya said. "Well, it's pretty much OK with me -- as long as it doesn't happen again. But there's some costs that the taverner here wants to see you about reimbursing him for."   
"Buckets!" the man swore. "I suppose you're wondering why I wanted to talk to you."   
"Uh huh."   
"Well, see, from what I've heard of you hero types, you're good and honest folk who strive to bring justice to the land --"   
"Hey Amelia!" Quorinelya yelled (while the man cringed). "Score one for you and your spin doctoring. This guy believes that we're good and honest folk who strive to bring justice to the land."   
"That's because we are," Amelia said smugly. She snapped the bible shut and got up to join the others.   
"Either that or because he wants us to do something for him and can't come up with a better excuse for us involving ourselves in his troubles," Quorinelya said. "Might I suggest money?" she asked the man.   
"Uh, I can't offer much in the way of payment," the man said.   
"On account as you've drunk it all?"   
"On account as my drinking was all on account anyway. I kind of owe everybody."   
"Uh huh," Quorinelya said. "Well, we'll leave resolving that little problem as an exercise for the customer. What problem did you actually want Lina Inverse to help you with?"   
"Uh, my dad, Jacob's gone missing. He was driving a wagonload of supplies up to the Heights Temple in the Raker Mountains. So my li'l bro, Larion, he thought the old man'd probably got hisself snowed in. So he went up to fetch him home. Now, he ain't come back either. I hate to guess what might've happened to them. Do you think you can help me?"   
There was a silence before Quorinelya said, "You want me to find a couple of missing people for you."   
"That's right."   
Quorinelya turned to Gourry. "Am I missing something?" she asked him. "Wouldn't I turn this guy into a frog for asking for something like that?"   
The man glowered. "You'd turn me into a frog for asking you to do a good deed?" he roared.   
"Well, what's up with you?" Quorinelya asked back. "You let your Dad go off with this wagonload by himself when it's pretty obviously a dangerous thing to do. Then when he disappears, you let your little brother go off _by himself_ to look for the old man. Then, with both of them missing, you get yourself stinking drunk while trying to find me or somebody else to go try to hunt down your missing relatives. You're a real piece of work --"   
With a roar, the man swung at Quorinelya. He caught her by surprise and his fist slammed into her chest. She flew backward, landing on a table and sprawling there. Immediately, Gourry was on his feet, drawn sword in his hand.   
"Oh, you really shouldn't've done that," the blonde swordsman said.   
"Gourry," Amelia interrupted.   
"What?" Gourry asked.   
"Before you thrash this dishonorable cur within an inch of his life --"   
"Already there," the big, hungover man moaned, now clutching at his skull.   
"-- may I borrow your cloak?" Amelia finished. "Lina needs it."   
"Huh? Yeah, sure." Gourry tossed his cloak to Amelia, all the while not taking his glare off the big man. "Now prepare to be thrashed, you dishonorable cur!"   
"I suppose this means you guys aren't going to help me?" the man mumbled. 

"Oh, hey, Wohin's awake," Zelgadis said, coming into the common room. "Has he explained his problem?"   
"Oh sure," Amelia said, quickly covering Quorinelya with Gourry's cloak. "He also punched Lina's lights out."   
"Oh?" Zelgadis asked, walking over to the group. "Well, he's been under a lot of stress lately, what with coming home from his last circuit run to find out that his father and brother have both gone missing up in the mountains and his frantic, half-crazed mom absolutely refuses to let him go hunting for them but on the other hand is desperate for him to make something happen that will get them back. So when are we leaving?"   
"Oh," Gourry said. He sheathed his sword.   
"So you've only just gotten home?" Amelia asked Wohin.   
"Couple of days," Wohin mumbled. "Guess I forgot to mention that." 

* * *

Quorinelya sat huddled in a chair, Gourry's cloak wrapped around herself. She stared at her bare feet while Zelgadis continued to explain:   
"... So Wohin the Journeyman Mason _suspects_ that his kin have been taken captive or killed by bad guys up in the mountains while en route to the temple and the only reason he holds any hope of their being alive is because a few of the bad guys around here sometimes like to take prisoners and demand ransoms for their release. Of course, he hasn't gotten any ransom demands or weird messages of any kind, but he doesn't want to wait until the bad guys get around to demanding money before he acts."   
"Uh huh," Quorinelya sighed. "OK, so I _did_ miss something. But why doesn't he go harass the town watch or someone like that. Surely, the local bad guys are the problem of some local good guys."   
"I did go to them," Wohin said dully. "But they said they've got more important things to do than try to find a lost old coot and his good-for- nothing son --"   
"Your words?" Quorinelya asked.   
"Theirs. Dad's a great guy -- salt of the earth. And Larion, he's just still figuring out what he wants to do with his life."   
"So the local good guys don't think your family's worth helping," Quorinelya sighed.   
"Same with our customers," Wohin said.   
"Who?"   
"The delivery was to the Air Shamans at the Heights Temple up in the Raker Mountains," Zelgadis said.   
"I got that," Quorinelya said.   
"Well, it was _from_ the Air Shamans at a sister temple here in town," Zelgadis said. "Jacob had a long term contract to make these deliveries for the Air Shamans --"   
"They couldn't just fly the stuff up?" Quorinelya asked.   
Zelgadis glared at her. "No," he said, after a silence.   
"Just asking," Quorinelya said. "I'm sure that you can crank some numbers sometime and show me how totally uneconomic trying to do that would be."   
"It'd put Dad out of business, it would," Wohin complained.   
"Your Dad _is_ out of business," Quorinelya reminded the big man. "At least, he is right now. And he might've been better off not having that long term contract with the Air Shamans."   
"That'd seem," Wohin admitted. "The damned shamans didn't want to know anything except when was their damned shipment going to get to the other temple. They said I should let the city watch hunt for my missing Dad. No help from them at all. I mean, twenty years he'd been their contracted wagoner and they won't even send somebody to see what happened."   
"And you can't go --" Quorinelya began.   
"Me Mom'd throw a fit," Wohin interrupted. "An absolute fit."   
"Like she doesn't already," Zelgadis said dryly.   
"Those are just her warm-up exercises."   
"Clever line," Zelgadis applauded. "So when do we leave?" he asked the others.   
Quorinelya looked up at him. "That's it, then? We're going to save the world by finding these two losers?"   
"Who're you calling losers?" Wohin bridled.   
Quorinelya sighed. "I _was_ calling your family losers, but you're right and I'm wrong. They're not losers. The losers here is me, for letting myself get cast in this mess --"   
"That might be, Lina," Zelgadis said. "You might indeed be a complete loser - -"   
"You would never say that if the real Lina were here," Gourry warned him.   
"If the real Lina were here, she'd be wearing clothes," Amelia said frostily.   
"And regardless," Zelgadis said, giving Amelia a puzzled look, "we should all remember that a massive avalanche may be launched by a single, small snowball."   
"You think that my Dad got caught in an avalanche?" Wohin asked him.   
"And isn't that supposed to be my line?" Amelia asked.   
Zelgadis shrugged. "So when do we leave? If we're going up into the mountains, we'll need cold-weather camping gear."   
"That means clothing's recommended," Amelia told Quorinelya.   
"Yeah, yeah. I get it," Quorinelya grumbled.   
"That's nice," Zelgadis said. "Care to explain it to the rest of us?"   
"No," Quorinelya said.   
"Sure," Amelia said. "This immoral hussy was using an illusion to cover her nakedness."   
"Yeah?" Gourry asked. "She sure didn't look naked."   
"That's how illusions work," Amelia told him. "Until she got knocked unconscious and the illusion was ended --"   
"It wasn't an illusion," Quorinelya said. "I was wearing conjured clothing."   
"Which still vanished when you were knocked out."   
"Well, yeah."   
"That's a pretty risky thing for an adventurer to rely on for clothing," Zelgadis said. "Why'd you --?"   
"Two words!" Quorinelya shouted at him. "Costume! Budget!"   
"Oh." Zelgadis crumpled. "Yeah. Right. OK: End of discussion."   
"What do you mean, end of discussion?" Amelia jumped to her feet and looked around for something impressive to stand on. From prior experience, though, she decided that nothing was suitable. She stayed on the common room floor. "Are you going to let Lina parade through this production wearing nothing?"   
"I won't be wearing nothing --"   
"She'll be wearing an illusion."   
"I'll be wearing conjured clothing," Quorinelya corrected the blonde swordsman. "And I'll take more care to keep my distance from hot-tempered clients."   
"I said I was sorry," Wohin said.   
"And I still say that that makes strike two," Quorinelya replied.   
"And I say that this conjured clothing scam is unacceptable," Amelia said. "It's immoral. What's this stuff about Lina's costume budget?"   
"I don't have one," Quorinelya said. "Nick told Fathead that I didn't need one --"   
"That's _Fafred_," Zelgadis growled.   
"-- and _Fathead_ believed him," Quorinelya continued, glaring at Zelgadis. "So, the costume budget for Lina was set to zero. I get to come up with whatever I'm wearing on my own. And, since I need to change size kind of a lot --"   
"How come?" Amelia asked.   
"Because Lina's supposed to be big but I can only do the sorceress shtick --" She glanced at Gourry. "I can only cast spells when I'm small," she clarified.   
"So how're you going to play out Lina's fight scenes?" Amelia asked.   
"Badly," Quorinelya replied. "If the results so far are any indication."   
"No, but what size --"   
"Excuse me," Wohin interrupted. "Uh, I think my work here's done? You've gotten the mission briefing, right? And any details we missed, Zelgadis can fill in, right? So I can go, right? Before something goes wrong and I go to strike three?"   
"Yeah, OK," Quorinelya said tiredly. "Go away."   
While Wohin scuttled, Gourry looked at Quorinelya and said, "Gee, I think it's getting on toward suppertime. Don't you think so, Lina?"   
"I suppose so," Quorinelya agreed. "Which means that a whole lot of extras will be turning up here Real Soon and then you'll be chowing down your usual obscene quantity of food." She began shuffling toward the stairs. "Later, gang."   
"You don't want --" Gourry began, with waning hope.   
"Not hungry," Quorinelya said. "We'll be leaving for the mountains in the morning, I suppose? Hopefully, I'll be ready then. And, hopefully, the rest of you can take care of getting whatever supplies we need? Thanks."   
The other three looked at each other.   
"I suppose that _is_ the star's perogative," Amelia said grumpily.   
"And I guess I didn't _really_ need my cloak until tomorrow," Gourry said.   
A farmhand came up to the group. "Now?" he asked.   
"Come back tomorrow," Zelgadis sighed. "Bright and early," he advised. 

* * *

Story copyright 2002 Alan Lauderdale; parodied characters copyright H. Kanzaka / R. Araizumi.


	5. 4: Inclined!

** Cut Rate Slayers   
Dark Crystaline Eschaton **

5: Inclined! So how come you never get to descend to a mountain peak?  


  
"OK," Zelgadis (played by Fafred the Producer) shouted. "That was pretty good." He looked around the forest clearing at the fallen bandits and the members of his adventuring party. "Now, let's run it one more time for glory and for posterity."   
Most of the bandits stirred and struggled to get up. Then they limped (for the most part) away into the forest. Princess Amelia (played by the second-string muse, Malehelicon) stood looking smug while Gourry (played by the Gourry wannabee, Gaurry) went over to a tiny Lina Inverse (Quorinelya Tierce), who was on hands and knees and panting. One of the bandit stopped limping suddenly and turned to face Zelgadis.   
"For _posterity_?" he asked. "Are you saying you haven't had any film in the camera?"   
"Filmstock's expensive," Zelgadis said. "But I think we'll be able to do this in one take, now."   
"We've been able to do it in one take all along," the bandit said angrily. "The only reason we've had to work this stupid fight most of the day is because you're trying to choreograph this mess. And because _she_ keeps passing out."   
"That only happened once," the tiny sorceress flared. She started to jump to her feet, then evidently thought better of it.   
"Yeah, OK, that only happened once," the bandit conceded. "But each time some poor slob forgets his steps, it's back to the starting point for all of us. Is that any way to run a fight scene?"   
There were grumbles of assent. "OK, OK," Zelgadis said quickly. "We'll do just one run-through while the cameras roll -- with film. Then, when we've got that, we can go on with the quest --"   
"'Bout time," Amelia groused.   
"Stifle it, Muse," Zelgadis told her. "This is something that you'll never appreciate, but it's action scenes that fill the seats."   
"However, character studies are what win the prizes," Amelia rejoined.   
"Unless you employ legionnaires and lions," Lina grumbled, finally staggering to her feet.   
"Is that a new role-playing game?" Gourry asked. "How many dice does it take to get through a --?"   
"Hey! Can we get a little _work_ done around here?" an impatient voice shouted from the forest.

  
It was a beautifully warm and pleasant day for gamboling through the woods and the party, consisting (on paper) of Lina Inverse, Princess Amelia, Gourry the Co-operative --   
"I think I'd like to have my agent review this scene setting before publication," Gourry said.   
"But co-operation is supposed to be a _good_ thing," Lina said. (For reasons best known to herself, she had shrunk to about thirteen inches' height and was hitching a ride on Gourry's shoulder.) "You know, plays well with others?"   
"I don't think I want to be known as Gourry the Model Kindergarten Kid."   
"Maybe," Zelgadis said, but it's a curious fact that the very same virtues that make one a model Kindergarten Kid also make one an actor or actress who is most appreciated by producers."   
"Model Kindergarten Kids are dripping with box-office pizzaz?" Lina asked.   
"OK, there are one or two exceptions."   
"Like what?" Gourry asked.   
While Zelgadis took a moment to look impotently furious, a voice from the forest shouted, "We're losing light..."   
"Right," Amelia said. "Hey, Gourry, you know my sister-in-law? The goddess of getting things done on time and under budget --"   
"Why didn't I hire her?" Zelgadis wondered aloud.   
"Because _nobody_ can hire her," Amelia told him quickly. "So, Gourry, you know what she'd advise in a situation like this?" Amelia walked over and stood right in front of the bold adventurer, looking up at him since he had more than a foot of height over her.   
"Uh, what?" the bold adventurer asked.   
Amelia suddenly trashed Newtonian spacetime by wrapping her arms around Gourry's neck (while keeping her feet firmly on the ground and simultaneously batting Lina at least twenty feet off of the bold adventurer's shoulder). Then she kissed Gourry. On his very surprised mouth. Very lingeringly. Eventually, the excursion outside of ordinary space-time mechanics was nearly over.   
"Just do it," Amelia whispered into Gourry's ear.   
And then the excursion was over and Amelia's mouth was much more than a foot below Gourry's ear.   
"Oh," Gourry said. "Okay."   
"And all was once again right with the world," Zelgadis declared, watching Lina pick herself up off the ground. "More or less. Lina!" he shouted. "Would you _please_ get yourself back to your normal size?"   
Lina began trudging toward him and the others. Each trudge brought her about three or four inches nearer. There was a lot of trudging in prospect. "No," the girl said.   
Zelgadis glared at her. "No?" he echoed. "What do you mean, no? You're supposed to be a fifteen-year-old human girl --"   
"I'm supposed to be the most powerful sorceress in the universe," Lina interrupted.   
"Well no, not exactly," Amelia said.   
"No? How about the most powerful sorceress on the planet?" Lina asked.   
Amelia shook her head. "No, you get beat up much too often to be even that powerful."   
"But I'm powerful enough that gangs of bandits run for it if I just admit to being _the_ Lina, right?"   
"Yeah," Amelia said. "But that's really not saying much."   
"And there's at least a fifty-fifty chance of us dying of boredom first," the voice in the woods shouted.   
"Quiet!" Lina screamed. "This is important. So I'm more like the most powerful sorceress in this forest?" she asked.   
"Well, powerful sorcerous-types tend to make a habit of living reclusively in forests ... --" Amelia began, until Zelgadis whispered something in her ear. "But in this case, provided that we define 'forest', "powerful' and 'sorceress' properly, then probably yes."   
"Oh well done, Muse," Lina said dryly. "A 'yes' that was indistinguishable from 'That is a secret.'"   
"So are you going to get back to normal size or aren't you?" Zelgadis asked, as Lina trudged up next to Gourry's boots.   
"I aren't," Lina told the chimera. "Of course, you want to know why. The reason is because I'm too tired. Getting to normal human size is a lot of work for me. But I need to be like this in order to get any magic done. And we've been walking along practicing these combat drills that you seemed to think were such a good idea --"   
"Way to incorporate your physical reality into the plotline!" a voice in the forest shouted. "Go Lina!"   
"My first fan!" Lina exclaimed.   
"How thrilling for you," Zelgadis said sourly. "So you're too tired to get back to normal?"   
"You can put it that way, if you like," Lina said. "It'll probably work even better in the subtitling. But I'm also not willing to -- Gourry, would you pick me up sometime before the episode ends?"   
"Huh? Oh, OK." Gourry picked Lina up and put her back on his shoulder.   
"Thank you, Gourry," Lina said sweetly, as she seated herself on his shoulder plate. "Now, I'm not willing to expand myself yet again to human size here in this -- you want to finish that scene setting paragraph?"   
"Huh?" Zelgadis belatedly realized how quickly the scene had gone off the rails. "Uh right." 

...gamboling through the woods and the party -- yada, yada, yada -- would doubtless have been gamboling with the best of them -- 

"I'm pretty good at roulette," Gourry offered. "I don't much like blackjack, though. I mean, it's all about who can add the best, and there aren't enough black jacks in most decks of cards to keep it interesting --"   
"If we ignore it, maybe it'll go away?" Zelgadis suggested softly.   
"It won't," Amelia replied equally softly, "but we should ignore it anyway."

...but the road they were on obnoxiously refused to make gamboling very easy --

"Oh, that's easy," Gourry scoffed. "They just need to get some lawyers to do something about their license."   
"Will you knock it off?" Lina stormed at him.   
"Well, OK..." he said reluctantly, and brushed her off his shoulder.   
In a fair imitation of a cat, Lina managed to land on her feet in a crouch. "That was _not_ funny," she fumed.

... because it refused to run at the same level as the forest. Usually, it was up on an embankment, compared with the surrounding trees and brush, but now, it ran down into what was ordinarily a dry gully. Such was not the case just now for perhaps the other main reason that gamboling was not a pleasant option --

Amelia glared at Gourry. "What?" Gourry asked. 

It was pouring rain and the gully was swollen with floodwater. 

"!@#$% this!" a voice shouted from the trees. "We'll ambush you when the rain lets up!"   
"Hey, wait a minute!" Zelgadis shouted through the pouring gloom. "The mist'll make this very picturesque -- and also cover up any small mistakes anyone makes."   
"!@#$% you! Later, mudpie!"   
"We need to talk," Zelgadis said grimly. 

Story copyright 2002 Alan Lauderdale, parodied characters copyright H. Kanzaka / R. Araizumi.


	6. 4b: Disinclined!

** Cut Rate Slayers   
Dark Crystaline Eschaton **

4b: Disinclined! So how come you never get to descend to a mountain peak?  
  
(2nd Take) 

  


* * *

  
Quorinelya, the poor excuse for a Lina Inverse in the present poor excuse for an imitation Slayers epic, peered ahead through the cold, heavy rain. The road had already become a morass of cold, soft, squelching mud and she was picking her way along the edge of it. There wasn't much reason for her to tread her way carefully. She was already soaked to the skin and, after a few ill-judged steps already, her soaked boots were waterlogged inside and covered with mud up to mid shin. Still, sinking deep into the mud wasn't fun and it was a lot of work hauling her foot out again, so she slogged warily.   
Behind her, Zelgadis (played by Fafred the Wunderkind) was fretting about his makeup. He was also complaining that the big, concluding brawl at the Obligatory Tavern had taken place off-camera.   
"Damn this production schedule!" he exclaimed again. "I mean, I had the extras lined up, the choreography rehearsed -- I even had the escrow funds set up to cover the trashing that the Obligatory Tavern was going to get --"   
"So you're saying that you'd put more money into that unshot scene than into my costume budget," Quorinelya said.   
"You're harping again," Fafred warned her. "If you want true misery, instead of your tired old screed, think about that poor guy whose one brief moment in front of the camera was going to get the whole melee started. He was devastated when we had to cancel. It's all your fault, you know."   
"My fault?!" Quorinelya exclaimed. "How's it my fault? I'm just trying to be this Lina Inverse person."   
"Well, it'd definitely be her fault, so it's not surprising that it's yours," Fahfred replied. "You kept gumming up our attempts to get the initial plot exposition over and done with, so when it came time to take drastic action in order to get even close to back on schedule, the only thing I could do was cancel the scene of gratuitous violence. Have you any idea how canceling a scene of gratuitous violence is going to affect our ratings?"   
"Uh, no," Quorinelya said. "But since you're mentioning it, I'm guessing that the effect is Not Good."   
"You're damned right it's not good!" Fafred shouted. "It sucks!" There was a squelching noise and he looked down at his foot. It had vanished into the mud.   
"Yea verily and even the land doth conspire to illustrate thine curses," Amelia (played by Malehelicon) remarked.   
Fafred's reply was unprintable.   
Amelia blushed. She started a tart reply, then thought better of it and returned to the labor of cajoling a pack mule into continuing to plod forward through the storm. The mule's default option seemed to be to stand still and hope that the universe would go away. So far, Gourry (played by Gaurry) and the princess were succeeding at keeping the beast moving, but the motion was minimal and they were running out of bright, shiny enticements.   
"Being Lina means I get to complain a lot, I think --" Quorinelya said.   
"No it doesn't!" everyone else shouted.   
"Hogwash!" Quorinelya shouted back. "Sometimes, it's _good_ to be the bitchy star. So tell me again how our slogging along this nowhere track is a bold stroke for truth and justice. Because I keep forgetting."   
"That would be Amelia's job," Zelgadis said, trying to replace a loose pebble on his face.   
"Oh no you don't!" Lina told him, since Amelia had satisfied herself with a mere glare at the chimera. "When that scotch mist congealed into serious sheets of rain a half-hour after we set out, who was it who said that a return to town would mean a certain run-in with darling Wohin, a third strike, serious mayhem and the certainty of a stay in the town pokey until the legal system there could fleece us for everything we had?"   
"I don't think it was me," Gourry asserted.   
"I don't either," Lina told him. "The sequence was of more than two events. So it wasn't you and since she has too generous an opinion of legal systems everywhere, I don't think it was Amelia. So that means -- well, well! -- it must've been everyone's favorite plot contrivance, Zelgadis!"   
"How would you know what _anyone's_ favorite plot contrivance is, around here?" Zelgadis asked her. "You haven't spent a moment with anyone's or anything's back story --"   
"I haven't had a moment off camera to do anything!" Quorinelya told him. "Nick shanghaied me into getting cast in this mess and the next thing I know, we're off and running."   
Zelgadis ignored the protest. "But for your information, everyone's _favorite_ plot contrivance is Lina Inverse's penchant for charging into absurdly overmatched situations because of her combination of overconfidence, ego, obstinacy, and unwillingness to listen to anyone else's advice."   
"And how is it that we're out here getting soaked because of me?" Lina asked.   
"Well," Gourry said, "that Wohin guy got us specifically to go looking for his kin because he'd heard that Lina Inverse was a seriously powerful heroine."   
"Thanks, Gourry." Lina wiped the rivulets of rainwater from her forehead. "I knew somebody could make this excursion all my fault." 

"You know," Amelia said, looking at a piece of paper she was holding, even as the downpour was reducing it to pulp, "it seems to me that this forest we are traversing has trees that are of a darksome and foreboding nature. Their numbers, also, are such as to strive to crowd out the very roadway we're ... uh ... squelching on."   
"You're bothered by some trees?" Gourry asked her.   
"That would be the gist of it," Lina sighed. "So whose deathless prose were you trying to make into some semblance of literary merit?" she asked.   
"Deathless prose?" Amelia asked. She quickly popped the sodden pulp in her mouth. "Whad deff-flesh proshe?"   
"Yes, that is the question _all_ the critics are asking," Lina agreed, turning to look at Amelia. "Oh," she added, eyeing the champion of truth and justice. "You're not eating those words, are you?"   
Amelia swallowed quickly. "No," she said simply. "Not now."   
"Uh huh," Quorinelya said. "Good luck digesting that text -- Oh!" she exclaimed, turning forward again. "Looky, looky: We have company." She indicated the bandits who were stepping out onto the trail ahead from the trees. "How did we ever get to be so fortunate?"   
"Well, I had these barroom brawlers all already paid for ..." Zelgadis began.   
"Not that we're entirely thrilled with this substitute assignment," the apparent leader of the bandits said. "Instead of a nice warm tavern to commit mayhem in, we've had to wait around out here in a cold, damp tent all day for you guys to show up --"   
"Be grateful for the tent," Gourry told him. "We've been out _in_ the rain, slogging."   
The bandit shrugged. "And then there's the insurance," he said. "You get into a bar-room brawl and it's pretty much confined to fists and bruises and concussions. But out here --" He drew his sword. "These things are _sharp!_ People could really get hurt here if we're not careful. And the coverage rates reflect that."   
"Is that a subtle way of inviting us to surrender?" Lina (i.e. Quorinelya) asked.   
"Surrender?" the bandit asked. "You mean without fighting, so we can go directly to tying you all up and then doing whatever we want to with you guys?" He glanced at Amelia and then back at Lina. "Uh, what's the censorship rating on this production, anyway?"   
"Come on guys," Zelgadis sighed. "What'd I tell you about staying in character while we're recording?"   
"Oh, uh, right," the bandit said quickly. "So, uh... If you wants to travel on our road, ladies and uh, big intimidating swordsman and, uh, mudman, you gotta pay the toll."   
"Nope," Lina said. She snapped her fingers and a sword appeared in her hand. It glowed in the wet gloom. "Too poor to pay a cash toll and too annoyed at you to try any feminine wiles --"   
"Not that you've got much femininity on which to base any wiles," Amelia muttered.   
"I heard that," Lina called. "Now I'm mad. Come on, you hoboes. You want a piece of --? No, on second thought, I think I'll try to find a better way to phrase that: You realize, by the way, that this is the famous Lina Inverse you're about to get thrashed by?"   
"The Bandit Killer?" one of the bandits asked.   
"The Dragon Spooker?" another suggested.   
"The Chaos and Destruction Poster Girl?" another offered.   
"The Walking Force of Destruction?" someone else mentioned.   
"The Girl Who Leaves Wreckage and Mayhem in her Wake?"   
"The Beautiful Young Genius of Sorcery?"   
"Flattery will get you everywhere," Lina smiled.   
"The Flat-chested, Brainless, Breastless Witch?"   
"OK. Back to the fighting," Lina growled.   
"Yeah," the bandit leader said. "I think we know who we're up against. Like, you know, you're famous."   
"Oh. So how come you're not running for the hills?" Lina asked.   
"They're right over there," Gourry pointed with his sword, which, it should perhaps be noted, was also glowing.   
"Uh, thanks," the bandit leader said. "But, you know, it's kind of an annoying thing: Of the last four groups of travellers we've accosted, three of them had a skinny, flat-chested, auburn-haired girl who said she was Lina Inverse and that we should run for the hills."   
"What about the fourth?" Gourry had to ask.   
"No skinny little Lina, but it did have one Mazoku Xelloss. Unfortunately, he didn't let us know that he was with them until after we attacked. That was not a good day. So, anyway --"   
"You're just going to have to learn the hard way whether I'm really Lina Inverse or just some other skinny, flat-chested, auburn-haired, drowned rat --" Lina said.   
"Character, dammit! Character!" Zelgadis shouted. "Why is it so hard to get an egomaniac's character _right_? Never mind. That was a rhetorical question, anyway." A sword appeared in the chimera's hand. "Shamboodi!" He attempted to charge toward the bandits. Unfortunately, he'd sunk a little deeper into the mud than he expected. His feet were unable to keep up with the rest of him and he fell forward into the mud.   
Gourry looked at the fallen chimera. "You OK, Zeggy?" he asked.   
"Mmmph, mrmph, mgah!" the chimera replied, finally lifting his head enough to spit out the mud. "I think I've told you before not to call me Zegg-oof!" His latest complaint was cut off by the boot of one of the bandits. They'd accepted Zelgadis's warcry as a signal to start. The battle had already begun.   
"Dibs on the wenches!" one of the bandits shouted, running toward Amelia. She regarded his onrush disdainfully.   
"You cur!" she exclaimed, as his approach was thwarted by Lina's interposition. "Are you so lacking in honor that you would rush to secure for your disgusting appetites the unarmed women in a group while leaving it to your associates to get thrashed by our brave men?"   
"Actually ... no," the bandit said, as he concentrated on disposing of the sword and sorceress who obstructed his way to Amelia. "I ... was ... thinking ... that ... a ... sword ... at ... your ... throat ... might ... persuade ... your ... champions ... to ... surrender ... rather ... than ... see ... you ... lose ... your ... head."   
Gourry, who was bashing bandits while helping the chimera to his feet, paused a moment to exchange a look with Zelgadis. After the barest pause, since this _was_ the middle of a fight, they both said "Nahh!" and resumed fighting."   
"It was just a thought," the bandit fighting Lina said. "Guess it's back to rape." He redoubled his efforts to pound Lina into next week.   
Lina, however, while not that good at hurting the bandit, was proving extraordinarily talented at dodging the bandit's attacks against her. Thwarted way too many times in quick succession, the bandit lost whatever composure he'd originally had. His attacks became frenzied and his technique careless. In a driving rain with uncertain footing, this was a bad thing. All of a sudden, the bandit slipped -- and then screamed. The next thing that Quorinelya knew, the blade of her sword was sticking through the man's chest.   
"Oops," Quorinelya said. The sword, with too much dead weight on it for her to handle, slipped out of her grasp. The sword vanished and the dead bandit squelched into the mud.   
"They got Kenny!" one of the other bandits shouted. "The bastards!" The fighting around Zelgadis and Gourry paused.   
"Actually, that was me," Quorinelya admitted. "And I, um..."   
"Oh," the shouting bandit said. "Thanks: _She_ got Kenny!" he corrected himself. "The bitch!"   
"Well, duh!" one of the other bandits said. "She's Lina. Tell us something we don't already know."   
"All right," Zelgadis said, resuming his own swordfight. "Guys, you may have to use a pint or two of extra stage blood on him this afternoon, because the rain's going to just wash it away."   
"You don't need stage blood for this," Quorinelya said. "I mean, Kenny's really dead."   
"He's _what_?" Everyone stopped fighting again.   
"What do you mean, he's really dead?" another bandit asked. "Don't tell me we're going to have fill out the paperwork for a work-related accident. Are you all sure you know what you're doing during combat?"   
"Hey, the guy slipped in the mud," Quorinelya said. "Is it my fault he fell on my sword?"   
"Besides which, this Kenny was most decidedly evil," Amelia pointed out. "With his penultimate breath, he promised rape. With the breath before that, he was proposing extortion --"   
"What's evil got to do with it?" one of the other bandits demanded. "What we're concerned with here is competence and conditions. Does everybody here know how to perform a combat that's going to provide the requisite vicarious thrills to the customers? Added to that, are the working conditions here conducive to smooth performance of our expected combat routines? You're saying Kenny slipped?"   
"Well, he _was_ getting a little reckless with his sword," Quorinelya said.   
"... Not to speak ill of the dead?" one of the bandits asked nastily. "Are you sure that you shouldn't've been able to keep Kenny from injuring himself quite so badly?"   
"It wasn't my fault," Quorinelya insisted.   
"So you say," a bandit shrugged. "All I'm going to say is that I don't think we need any more Kennys today. I've had enough of this scene." He turned and walked back into the woods. Over his shoulder he called, "The next hand is seven-stud -- none of that wild-card crap." With a murmured chorus of "Yeah"s, "I'm in"s, and "Damn' right"s, the other bandits also walked away. Soon, the adventurers were left alone on the road. 

"Damn it!" Zelgadis slammed down his sword into the muck. "What kind of scene of gratuitous violence was that?"   
"I'd've said it went pretty well for everyone except Kenny," Lina said. "Can we get the mule moving again?"   
"But Zelgadis speaks truthfully," Amelia observed. "There is something misconstrued about the way yon varlets did quit the field of battle. Rather than through our vanquishing them by force of arms and magic, 'twould seem as though they had decided that some work rules were being violated?"   
"So what's your point?" Lina asked. "They're not still bothering us, are they?"   
"Well, no --"   
"Good enough for me."   
"-- but it makes for a lousy story," Amelia continued.   
"I'll say," Zelgadis grumbled.   
Amelia ignored him. "Where do work-rule violations lie in the eternal struggle between good and evil?" she asked.   
"Oh, they're evil," Gourry said. Lina looked at him.   
"How do you know that?" she asked.   
"Dad was a Teamster," Gourry replied. "If there's one thing I got from him -- besides my Sword of Light -- it's knowing that work-rule violations are the blackest evil in the whole universe."   
"What about Shobranigdu?" Lina asked.   
Gourry lapsed back into his usual look of confusion. "Well, I guess he must commit them a lot, right?" he asked. "Maybe he really abuses his minions." 

Story copyright 2002 Alan Lauderdale. Parodied characters copyright H. Kanzaka / R. Araizumi.


	7. 5: Temple!

** Cut Rate Slayers   
Dark Crystaline Eschaton **

5: Temples! Why are they always so remote?  


  


* * *

  
.   
  
Quorinelya (currently busy portraying the famous sorceress, Lina Inverse) looked down at the tree line as she edged along the mountain trail. Wohin's dad, she decided, had one serious talent for wagoneering if he was able to make regular delivery trips to a temple along this route.   
Zelgadis (played by the story's producer, Fafred of the Searing Backstory), meanwhile, was still plotting to get a scene of gratuitous violence that could be on camera and completed under acceptable working conditions.   
"Maybe if we had to defend the temple against a surprise attack by the bandits," he mused, "but _after_ they've gotten inside the temple, so we don't have to worry about the ice and scree outside."   
"You're going to leave the sound effects outside?" Gourry (played with enormous accuracy and insight by Gaurry) asked.   
Everyone took a moment to stare at him. Then, they just took a moment.   
"These rocks are scree," Princess Amelia (portrayed by that long-suffering Muse of Overwrought Prose, Malehelicon) explained to him.   
"Really? They look like --" he started to reply.   
"They're _called_ scree," she cut in. "Deal with it." Quickly she turned to Zelgadis. "OK, so we have a fight in the temple with some bandits," she changed the subject. "How did they get in without our noticing?"   
"Well, they're bandits," Zelgadis replied. "So they're sneaky. They snuck into the temple while the guards weren't paying attention --"   
"So one of us was derelict in our duty?" Gourry asked. "I don't think I like that."   
"It wasn't any of us," Zelgadis said, "unless it was Lina," he added softly, glancing ahead at the sorceress. "She was still feeling a little blue about having iced poor Kenny earlier in the day. So she wasn't paying attention as closely as she should."   
"Oh. Well, I guess that works for me," Gourry said.   
"Right," Amelia agreed. "So there the dastardly villains were, within the sacred stone walls of that ancient, revered, holy hall wherein only blessed sandals had trod for countless centuries. Plus the occasional visitor's shoes, as had occurred earlier the same day. Softly, their worn but flexible soles gliding over the oft-trod flagstones of the centuries-old hallways, the malicious and vengeful minions of --"   
"You _are_ going to finish painting this scene before we're all senile, aren't you?" Zelgadis interrupted, He yawned, only just barely giving the act a courtesy stifling.   
"What if we just jump-cut to the middle of tonight?" Gourry asked. "Nothing interesting's going to happen before then, is it?"   
Zelgadis shook his head. "You get dinner, but while the quantity is all right, it's awfully bland. Yes, we could --" 

Lina Inverse hammered on the large door at the entry to the Heights Temple of the Air Shamans.   
"We're here, we're weird and want beer!" she shouted. "Actually, though, the beer's optional. Hot coffee would be a lot better, considering how miserably dank it is out here. We'd rather have the coffee and a few minutes of your abbot's time. There's a missing wagoner we want to talk about. Hey?"   
"...or we could slog through the whole arrival sequence," Zelgadis said wearily. "It is atmospheric, after all."   
"Indeed," Amelia agreed. "A blistering, cold blast of wind tears at our clothing. Through the curtains of blowing snow, lying in this vale among the sharp, thrusting mountain peaks, stands this ugly, angular, stone structure --"   
"That would be the temple, right?" Gourry asked.   
"Right," Amelia sighed. "Although, on first sight, it had seemed only a few minutes away, distances in the piercing high altitudes of the mountains can be deceiving. It was only after another miserable half-hour in the freezing wind that we finally passed a squeaking wrought-iron sign that read, 

Height Temple  
owned and operated bythe Ancient and Venerable Order of the Airheaded Shamans

and managed to gain the doorstep of this maliciously aloof and remote building.   
"The temple is an intimidating stone structure that almost seems to be part of the mountains themselves. It hulks like a gray monstrosity in the middle of this barren landscape, throwing back the repeated assaults dealt it by the wind with grim resilience. The only light visible comes from a portico on the south face of the structure. A lantern hangs to the right of the door, which is fixed with a large heavy iron knocker."   
Lina looked at the door knocker. "Oh," she said. "Don't say anything," she warned the others, grabbing the knocker. "Don't say anything at all." She slammed the knocker against the door; it reverberated loudly and hollowly.   
"Why would we say anything about the knocker she's got?" Gourry asked.   
Lina turned and glared at him. "I thought I told you --"   
The large, wide door chose that moment to swing open. It started fast, but then the wind caught it so that it was really moving when it tagged Lina. She was sent flying toward Gourry who, unsurprised, caught her.   
"Oops," the man at the door said.   
"You OK, Lina?" Gourry asked her. She was hanging in his grip, her dazed face only an inch or so from his own.   
"Uh..." Lina said.   
"You base varlet!" Amelia exclaimed, pointing at the man in the doorway. "How dare you strike that girl when her back was turned toward you, you faithless coward? You're also not too bright," she added in confidence, "since that's the powerful and famous Lina Inverse you just sucker-slammed and she's got a temper that's shorter than Pasha Leoninus Tatliaglia's --"   
"Watch the censorship rating," Zelgadis warned.   
Amelia glanced at him. "I was going to say 'front teeth,'" she said. "You know: Lithping Leo, the Pasha of Parth?" She frowned. "What did you think I was going to say?"   
"Never mind," Zelgadis sighed.   
"What happened?" Lina asked Gourry, who was still holding her.   
"You were attacked by a door," he told her.   
"We're in a dungeon already?" she asked. "I thought we were just trying to get into the place. Wait a minute: It's windy and cold here --"   
"Also wet," Gourry noted.   
"Right. We _are_ still trying to get in. So who -- you can put me down now, Gourry, thanks, -- who attacked me with that door?" On her feet again, Lina turned to look at the doorkeeper.   
"I am terribly most sorry about your injury," the man breathed, staring with wide eyes at Lina. "The wind, it caught the door and _flung_ it from my grasp, you know."   
"Oh," Lina said.   
"We do not get the strange visitors to this door very often, you know," the man continued.   
"Who're you calling strange?" Lina demanded. "You're not sounding too terribly normal yourself, you --" She shook her head.   
"I did not mean to say that you are _strange,_ you know," the man quickly apologized. "Only that you are unpracticed at visiting to the door of this temple, you know. Else you would know that after you touch the knocker to use it, you should stand away from the door, you know. Because of the wind, you know."   
"I do know _now,_" Lina snarled. "So --"   
"But what are you doing standing out there in the snow and wind?" the man asked.   
Everyone waited, but he didn't add any tag phrase.   
"Waiting to be invited in?" Lina finally suggested.   
The man may or may not have heard her. "Come in, come in!" he urged. "Please, you'll die much more slowly inside, you know."   
"Sounds good to me," Gourry said as he and the others went past the man into a narrow hallway. "I'm Gourry Gabriev, by the way, and you've already met Lina."   
"Uh, yes. And I should make myself also introduced, you know," the man said. "My name, it is Victor von --"   
"Frankenstein?" Gourry interrupted. "_You're_ Doctor Victor von Frankenstein?"   
"Uh, no." The man tried again. "My name, it is Victor von --"   
"He might be Victor von Doom," Amelia suggested. Everyone gave her a blank look.   
"In anime?" Zelgadis asked her.   
"OK, so nobody here read that fic," Amelia grumbled.   
"What I wanted to say," the man resumed, "is that my name it is Victor von --"   
"I met a Victor von Hassenpfeffer once," Lina said. "But that was in a slapstick comedy where you couldn't take any of the names seriously." Everyone waited for the non-existent punchline. "Sorry," Lina finally said. "You were saying?"   
"What I wanted to say," the man tried again, "is that my name it is Victor von --" He paused. "Any more guesses?" he invited.   
"I'm the producer," Zelgadis smirked. "I don't guess. Your name, it is Victor von Height."   
"Because it's the Height Temple," Lina sighed while the host nodded. "You knew it all along," she accused Zelgadis.   
"Producer's privilege," Zelgadis smiled.

"So, do we tour this place before or after we kill this guy?" Gourry asked.   
"Gourry!" Amelia exclaimed. "Victor von Height is our host! We do not kill him until _after_ he has led us into some foul and death- dealing trap that he has set up somewhere within these walls. As well as make him apologize for the breach of social etiquette."   
"Oh," Gourry said. "Uh, why wait?"   
"Because doing otherwise would be an even bigger breach of etiquette --" Amelia began to explain.   
"Camera's running," Zelgadis interrupted. "Which way to the trap?" he asked Height.   
"Why don't I just show you around and -- you know -- let you find out for yourselves?" Height returned.   
"Because that would be a waste of film stock?" Zelgadis suggested. 

Zelgadis finally got his scene change. The gang toured (off-camera) the temple's narthex, sacristy, chapel, refectory, chapter house, pantry, lab, kitchen and dormitories. They also were made aware that the place was blessed (?) with a few cells, which were located belowstairs.   
"But that's the nearest equivalent to a dungeon available in this structure," Amelia declared. "We couldn't possibly tour there off- camera."   
"Why not?" Lina asked. "Always assuming that we have some interest in looking around down there," she added. "Speaking for myself, the enthusiasm is distinctively lacking."   
"But the production budget is awfully heavy with dungeon furnishings," Amelia said.   
"It is?" Gourry asked, perking up. "You mean the iron-bound doors and the torches in those wall-mount things --"   
"Sconces," Amelia said.   
"Right. And racks and whips and chains and brassieres --"   
"Uh, wait a minute," Lina said.   
"I think he means braziers," Amelia told her. "For heating the tongs and pokers and other implements of interrogation."   
"Oh," Lina said. "You know, I'm not sure that I _prefer_ that picture."   
"Sissy," Gourry said, adding "So all that stuff's down there in the cells? Along with the victims?"   
"Victims?" von Height asked. "What, you know, victims?"   
"I believe that the correct euphemism is 'guests,'" Zelgadis suggested.   
"You know, I thought I told you already that we don't often have guests coming to call at our Front Door of Doom," von Height complained.   
"And perhaps if you labeled the thing with its affectionate local sobriquet I wouldn't be feeling a headache coming on," Lina replied. "But you seem to be about to sneak past a plot point that's kind of bothering me."   
"Perhaps you should go lie down in one of the dormitories until you're feeling less bothered," Zelgadis suggested. "We can enjoy the opulently decorated dungeon while you rest."   
"Right." Lina glared at Zelgadis, then turned to Amelia. "So tell me, O All-Omniscient Muse of this sort of writing: An adventuring party enters an unfamiliar setting and proceeds to split up. When has this _not_ introduced a hazardous plot complication?"   
"I think there was a sequel to the Eye of Argon that, in a desperate attempt at originality, attempted to surprise the reader that way," Amelia said thoughtfully. "But the author failed to come up with an alternative way of advancing the plot and the whole effort faded away into ennui."   
"Exactly my point," Lina said. She turned to Zelgadis. "It would be a whole lot more unhealthy for me to go off by myself to lie down than to hang around with the rest of you..." She blinked. "Zelgadis!" she exclaimed. "Please tell me that you're confident that the writers here can produce something that's better than the Eye of --" 

Lina Inverse lay resting uncomfortably on the hard planks of the mattress-less bed in the dormitory.   
"I _hate_ jump-cuts," she remarked. 

Story copyright 2002 Alan Lauderdale. Parodied characters copyright H. Kanzaka / R. Araizumi.


	8. 6: Hospitality!

** Cut Rate Slayers   
Dark Crystaline Eschaton **

6: Hospitality! Adventurers Sometimes Need to Get Well Soon.   


  


* * *

  
  
Quorinelya Tierce (who was doing her best to perform the role of Lina Inverse in the present fly-by-night no-budget Slayers fic) lay staring up at the plain wooden ceiling of the dormitory that she'd gone to in order to rest. The rest of the party had gone belowstairs to inspect the dungeon which lay below the Temple von Height.   
"As long as I don't try to rejoin the others," the subpar Lina said to herself, "the evil plot complication that has to result from our splitting up like this won't necessarily manifest." She considered. "As long as I don't go looking for them." She considered some more. "And as long as they don't come looking for me, to make sure I'm all right." She looked at the open door into the dormitory. "Perhaps I should go bar the door, so that they can't find out that Something Awful has happened to me." She sighed. "Schrodinger's cat is such an elegant thought experiment," she said to herself. "Sucks to be living it, though."   
She sat up on the miserable excuse for a bed. ("Trestle table" would have been a much more accurate description for what she was lying on.) "I never got to ask about that thing that was bothering me," she complained to herself. "_Somebody_ besides me should have noticed and remarked on it by now, but since I'm supposed to be the titular character, it really should've been me. For all I know, the whole production is still waiting around for me to mention it." She sighed. "Doing so in a soliloquy is just wrong. Of course, that's no guarantee it won't happen that way." She waited. Nothing happened. "OK, so screw the dramatic imperatives: This is supposed to be a temple that's owned and operated by an order of Airhead Shamans. So how come Victor von Height takes us on a Grand Tour of the whole ediface and during that tour, we meet a grand total of zero inhabitants? That's zilch. Nadie." She shrugged.   
"We really could've used a reaction shot of Vic looking momentarily nervous before pouring himself a double brandy and looking, once again, the picture of a perfectly placid English butler. Or, with his name, of a perfect Nazi heirloom. Or whatever." She sighed. "There's nothing for it, I guess. I can't hide from the separation forever. I'm just going to have to bring on the Dreaded Plot Complication by trying to rejoin the gang." She got up and went over to a prie dieu. Resting on it was a copy of the temple brochure. She skimmed the thing, noting the pictures of happy worshippers, the paragraphs about airheaded shamanism, and, especially, the floor plan of the temple (complete with You Are Here arrow). "I'm here," she murmured, finding the arrow. "And they're there," she added, considering the very large multi-chambered wine cellar which the brochure claimed that the temple possessed. "So, to get there, I'd just go out that door and along that corridor and through that antechamber to those stairs and then down them... Definitely the way I'm expected to go... But I'm a sorceress. I don't have to do the routinely expected thing..."   
Soon after Lina had that thought, a dark, dank, underground chamber suddenly had a sorceress appear in it. The sorceress was very small. She was also naked.   
"Damn!" Quorinelya muttered. "That is _so_ inconvenient." She sighed and conjured the usual garish Lina costume for herself. "Other wizards are able to gate about without leaving behind everything they've got," she thought to herself, then braced herself for expansion to Lina's height, more or less. "Whuff!" With a slight puff of displaced air, she was bigger -- and staggering at the effort. "Why can't I figure out how to --?"   
Her thought was broken off because something slammed into her, sending the waifish sorceress (shaped like a stick no matter what size she took) flying several feet before she hit a wall and crumpled to the floor. 

Lina (which is to say Quorinelya) awoke to find herself lying on a cold, stone floor and wrapped in a blanket. Her body felt like one uninterrupted bruise. Princess Amelia (played by the understudy to all the Muses, Malehelicon) was sitting on the floor beside her. Somewhere close by she could hear a noise that sounded like a horrendous giggling which was being muffled.   
"Th' art awake," Princess Amelia said, seeing Lina's eyelids flutter and hearing the soft groan escape the sorceress's lips.   
"Maybe," Lina groaned.   
"Would you like to retire back to one of the dormitories to continue your recuperation?"   
"I would," Lina mumbled, "but I don't much care right now for moving. Besides, I don't think the beds in the dormitories are any softer than what I'm lying on right now."   
"I think wooden planks are a little more yielding than flagstones," the Princess suggested. "Both would be unacceptable for me, of course --"   
"Wrong fairy tale," Lina interrupted.   
"Oh. Really? I thought princesses were very particular about the beds they sleep in."   
"No. They're very particular about the princes they sleep _with_. Being particular about the furniture is optional and --"   
"So I'm taking that option."   
"Then how come you were chipper and spouting the yards of overwrought prose when we got to this temple after several days' journey --"   
"I was glad to get to get in out of the worsening weather."   
"-- _including_ several nights of camping on the cold, hard ground?"   
"Oh," Princess Amelia said. "Well... OK, I guess I'm giving back that option."   
"Good," Lina sighed. "The less discussion about bedding we have in this story, the better off we'll all probably be."   
"What are you going to say about bedding?" Zelgadis (portrayed by the production executive, Fafred the Optimistic) asked, coming up to the two women. "I think you'd better tell me, in case it becomes relevent to our rating."   
"It's hard," Lina said.   
Zelgadis coughed delicately. "I think I'm going to need a context for that remark."   
"The bed I'm lying on," Lina clarified. "It's hard."   
"You're lying on a stone floor," Zelgadis observed, then broke off, yelling "Gourry! Come over here, please?"   
Nothing happened. Zelgadis looked up, then sighed. "Amelia," he said wearily, "Gourry's watching the prisoner. Would you please...?"   
"Certes." Amelia got up and disappeared from Lina's limited field of view. Soon, though, Lina heard a loud whack! This was followed immediately by a yelp from Gourry. Shortly after that and a scrap of low conversation, a red-faced Gourry (played by a realistically red-faced Gaurry) turned up. The redness in his face seemed roughly shaped like a palm- print. Gourry, Lina noticed, was holding the end of a length of chain which he might well have forgotten about.   
"Gourry," Zelgadis said, "would you do us all the favor of describing the sort of bed that Lina is lying in just now?"   
Gourry glanced down at Lina, then frowned. "She isn't lying on a bed, Zelgadis," he said. "She's lying on a cold, hard, stone floor."   
"Thank you, Gourry," Zelgadis said.   
"That's it?" Gourry asked.   
"That's it," Zelgadis agreed. "We all have our own specialties and one of yours is descrying the obvious."   
"Oh. Okay, Zelgadis," Gourry said. Handing the stony-skinned chimera the piece of chain, the swordsman ambled away toward its other end.   
"What's with the chain, Zel?" Lina asked.   
"This?" Zelgadis said absently. "It's attached to the prisoner who was pounding on your unconscious and battered body when we found you in here."   
"Oh," Lina said. "Well, that explains a lot."   
"Uh huh. She knows you, by the way."   
"She? Knows me?" Lina asked.   
"You're very famous, remember?" Princess Amelia said.   
"Right." Lina sighed. "Found out who she is?"   
"She's famous, too," Zelgadis said.   
"But only because of her family connection," Amelia added. "You were getting slammed around by my sister, Gracia Wil Edison Saillune."   
"Really?" Lina asked.   
"Well, no, not _really,_" the princess admitted. "Skinflint here couldn't afford genuine casting for this part any more than he could for any other part. Actually, the part's being played by Mary Sue."   
"Mary Sue?" Lina repeated.   
"Mary Sue of the Self-Insertion Stylistic Device," Amelia elaborated.   
"Oh, _that_ Mary Sue."   
"But don't worry: It all works out really well --" Zelgadis said.   
"I'm so glad," Lina said. "Or I would be, if I cared."   
"You see, this particular cell block in this temple is for housing the criminally insane."   
"How nice."   
"My sister's just here for a little rest cure," the princess insisted.   
"Uh huh. You're referring to the role or the actress?" Lina asked.   
"You know the one about distinctions which make no difference being no distinction at all, right?" Zelgadis asked.   
"Well..."   
"I wouldn't say that logic was anyone's strong suit around here," Gourry called in from the green room.   
"Hey!" Zelgadis exclaimed.   
"Well, you _said_ it's my shtick: Descrying the obvious?"   
"All right, but just don't overdo it," Zelgadis sighed. He consulted a hint he'd etched into the plasticene on his wrist and then resumed the conversation: "That applies here, since, whichever we're talking about, the lady's stark raving bonkers. Deluded and denuded --"   
"Just what has this Mary Sue been up to?" Amelia roared. "I know my sister has a deeply rooted aversion to clothing, but I think you'd better tell me where this Mary Sue has been inserting herself --"   
"Never mind the denuded bit," Zelgadis mumbled. "I was just messing around with the insanity plea."   
"So I wandered into Mary Sue's quarters and she took the opportunity to try to beat the stuffing out of me?" Lina said. "Well, in that case, perhaps I should try to move myself to somewhere -- anywhere -- else." She got to her feet. This involved a fair amount of wincing and pain, but none of the movements involved proved impossible. Zelgadis and Amelia watched.   
"Thanks for the help, guys," Lina said, when she was at last wobbling on her feet.   
"Striving is good for the soul," Amelia advised.   
"And I was wondering if you were going to act any less wimpy than you were at the beginning of this epic," Zelgadis said. "Also..." He indicated the chain he was holding. "I thought it unwise to shake this thing around and perhaps attract MSN's attention --"   
Amelia glanced at him. "MSN?" she asked.   
"Mary Sue Naga."   
"Oh." Amelia sighed. "So many possible techie jokes. So little point to any of them. But enough about that --" She hoisted herself up onto a conveniently nearby (and extremely sturdy-looking) rack. "We have a quest to rededicate ourselves to, a mission to focus on, a script to find the right page of --" She broke off and glanced at Zelgadis. "Are we on- or off-book right now?"   
"Does it matter?" he asked her.   
"And how could we tell, anyway?" Lina asked.   
Zelgadis glared at her. "By _reading_ the damned thing?" he suggested icily.   
"Never got a copy," Lina replied sweetly. "I'm just supposed to feel the part. Boy, do I feel the part. Anyway, I'm going to focus on what my character's quest would be right now and go find the refectory --"   
"You're feeling hungry, Lina?" Zelgadis asked hopefully.   
"For a quarter of an apple, sure," she answered. "But I was also thinking that a bowl of whipped cream would be lots more comfortable to lie in than this floor."   
Zelgadis looked as though he wanted to take a moment. "I realize that there's a perfectly reasonable explanation for wanting to wallow in whipped cream," he sighed. "But, out of concern for the rating this story is ultimately going to get ... CUT!"

The refectory was a bright, airy, cheerful place, at least by comparison with the dark, dank, cell the last scene had occurred in. Large windows looked out hopefully upon the temple courtyard and the extremely moody night. Flickering light from the sconces which Gourry was happily lighting illuminated fitfully the polished wooden paneling on the walls and the rows of empty wooden tables and benches. Sitting on the table in one corner was a large bowl of whipped cream. Sitting on the bench in front of the bowl, still wrapped in a blanket and too tall to fit in the bowl, was the simulacrum of everybody's favorite heroine, Lina Inverse. "Damnit!" she exclaimed, and spattered a large serving spoon into the bowl. "That looks so luxurious!"   
"That's because it is," Zelgadis griped. "Keep ordering that sort of thing, Lina, and we'll be having budgetary problems again."   
"I missed it," Lina said sourly, fingering her blanket. "Just when was the moment that we weren't having budgetary problems?"   
There was a financial silence. Gourry finally broke it, more or less:   
"Um, Lina," he asked slowly. "How come you're not sh-- I mean, at mealtimes, when you're eating you make yourself s-- I mean, you know how sometimes you're able to walk around on the dinner table even though there's lots of plates of food all over the place and you don't knock any of them over or anything because, um --"   
"Because I'm small, you mean?" Lina asked him.   
"You said it; I didn't!" Gourry said quickly.   
"Yeah," Lina sighed. "And you want to know why, with this bowl of luscious, soft, whipped cream right here in front of me, I don't shrink down to my real size and jump in."   
"Uh, well, yeah," Gourry said.   
"Perhaps because she's aware that if she tried something like that," Zelgadis said darkly, "her little romp would wind up on the cutting room floor and I would be very displeased with her for the wasting of camera stock."   
"Couldn't care less, cuddles," Lina said to him.   
"Well then," Amelia spoke from up on a bench, "perhaps it's because the bold but experienced adventuress has perceived that, though the bowl of frothed cream offers pleasure to her flesh --"   
"_Much_ pleasure to my flesh," Lina agreed.   
"Careful, Lina," Zelgadis warned.   
"What?"   
"-- this location wherein she finds it is suspect with uncertainties and perhaps hidden dangers, the thwarting of which would require her to retain her keenest perceptions and most sensitive senses."   
"I wouldn't count on me for keen senses now, if I were you," Lina said. "My senses, keen or otherwise are all prudently hiding out in the green room, hoping to avoid notice by any of the aches and agonies that have taken up residence in me since my introduction to Mary Sue. Besides, I thought I had Gourry around to handle watching for stuff."   
"Huh?" Gourry asked.   
"Or not." Lina sighed. "Anyway, I'm staying too big for this bowl not because I'm such a clever or prudish adventurer but because I can't get small right now."   
"You can't?" Gourry asked. "Why not?"   
"Because Sweetie Pie over there --" Lina began, indicating the gagged and chained woman who was sitting on the bench next to Gourry. Said woman was drop-dead gorgeous -- and that even if one doesn't find the combination of chains and feminine flesh a turn on. If one did, and Zelgadis had his suspicions about Gourry, the sight was simply one to set way too many of the wrong synapses all misfiring at once.   
Although, again, Zelgadis had to wonder: With Gourry, how could one tell?   
Sweetie Pie had curling brunette bangs and the usual huge, expressive brown eyes, which, right now, were eagerly following the conversation. Sweetie Pie also had (unlike Lina, the real thing _or _the substitute) a figure. To say that the figure was attractive is like saying that a flapping red cape piques a bull's interest...   
It should also be noted that a great deal of Sweetie Pie's attractive figure and her enviably clear and perfectly smooth skin were on display. This is not to say that she wasn't dressed to go out in public places. She was, if the public place was, say, a European beach that actually had a dress code.   
"That's Mary Sue Naga," Zelgadis said.   
"Whatever," Lina sighed.   
"Actually, she's Gracia Will Naga," Gourry said. "According to the bio sheet."   
"No," Amelia said. "Her name, properly, is Gracia Wil Edison Saillune, the Dread Black Sorceress, Naga, the White Serpent."   
"Oh," Lina said. She looked at them; they all looked at each other.

"_But she's still Mary Sue to me!_" they all chorused.

"All right, where were we?" Zelgadis asked.   
"Mary Sunshine over there beat the crap out of me for nobody knows how long," Lina said, "since it was during a scene change."   
"But she could not have done you that much harm, Miss Lina," Amelia said. "My sister is sweet. My sister is gentle. My sister is kind --"   
"Your sister is stark raving bonkers," Zelgadis said. "Remember? She was about to slam that iron spike into Lina when we interrupted her."   
"How do you know she was only 'about to'?" Lina asked.   
"Lina, you weren't that badly hurt when we found you," Zelgadis said. "Unconscious and bruised, sure, but nothing like you would've been if she'd actually gotten you with that spike."   
"If you like." Quorinelya shrugged and abandoned all pretense of being the notorious Miss Inverse. "Here's the story: Mary Sue hurt me. I'll get better, eventually. I'm not hurt as badly as Mary Sue intended because my magic intervened. My magic's busy, having intervened to protect me from Mary Sue, so I can't work any spells now. My body couldn't support the amount of harm Mary Sue tried to do to me if I were only 13 inches tall, so I can't become small until I get better."   
"How long's it going to take you to get better?" Gourry asked.   
"Depends how badly she hurt me," Quorinelya replied. "And whether I get any R & R."   
"That's not likely," Amelia said. "We're in the middle of a quest."   
"To find the wagoner and his boy, I know," Quorinelya said. "So, anyway, that's why I'm not swimming in whipped cream --"   
"Then I guess I'll have to heal you, Miss Inverse," Amelia said.   
"That's OK," Lina said quickly. "I'll get better soon enough, I promise."   
"'Soon enough' isn't soon enough," Amelia said. "We are on a quest to uphold love and justice and our mission cannot wait upon you even a moment --"   
"But I wasn't asking you to wait upon me even a moment -- except whoever whipped up this bowl of cream."   
"That was me," Gourry said dreamily. He was smiling. His gaze was where one would expect it to be. (Hint: Not Quorinelya or Amelia.)   
"Thank you, Gourry," Lina said. She glanced at the swordsman, then muttered, "Talk about wasted gratitude. Look Amelia, I'm in for the quest. I'll come along wherever we decide to go next."   
"But, Miss Inverse, you don't have your magic and don't know when you'll get it back."   
"Well, yes, that's true --"   
"What if we should have need of it? What if we should have need of your Dragon Slave spell?"   
"But --" Lina began, then thought better of it. "That's academic now, anyway."   
"But what?" Zelgadis asked. "What about the Dragon Slave spell?"   
"I don't think I can cast it," Quorinelya admitted softly.   
"You don't think you can cast it?" Zelgadis echoed. "That's only Lina's signature spell, you know. Leveling multiple city blocks at the cost of reciting a simple little poem. If you're going to play Lina Inverse, you cannot _not_ know the Dragon Slave spell."   
"It's not a question of knowing it," Quorinelya said. "It's of being able to cast it. Magic, as I know it, is tiring, and something like the Dragon Slave would be so tiring that I don't think I could cast it."   
"Well sure!" Gourry exclaimed. "If you're going to look like a Barbie doll any time you do magic, of course you're not going to have the -- the whatever to level a whole city block."   
"Actually, I'd say that a Barbie doll has plenty of the whatever to level a whole city block," Zelgadis said thoughtfully, "especially if she moved -- but that's neither here nor there. Lina hasn't got any of the -- um -- other whatever ... uh --"   
"Now is about the time when I should be hitting you with something very magical and very painful, isn't it?" Lina asked.   
"Yeah...." Zelgadis smirked.   
"You think I won't remember what I owe you?" Lina asked. Zelgadis shrugged. Lina stood up. "Staring at this whipped cream is not giving me any vicarious pleasure," she allowed. "So I'll let the rest of you have a go -- perhaps even eat the stuff. Whatever. I'll just move over to this other bench -- not out of sight, so there's no arguing that the party's split up again --"   
"Wait a minute, Lina," Amelia resumed her pose on her bench. "I must still endeavor to soothe the pains that your body has suffered this day. I must repair the wounds which have beset you. I must restore your body to its hale and magic-wielding wholeness: I shall _HEAL_ you!"   
"Um, I'd rather not," Quorinelya murmurred, backing away from the princess.   
"But it's for the best," Amelia protested. "Don't you want to be all better and able to work your magic?"   
"Of course I do," Quorinelya said. "I just want to do it my way."   
"How can you want that?" Amelia exclaimed. "This is the Healing Power of White Magic I'm talking about. The most wonderful sensation in the whole world. It's even better than whipped cream!"   
"_Nothing_ is better than whipped cream!" Quorinelya insisted. "Except chocolate whipped cream, I guess," she allowed.   
Everyone took a moment to consider the merits of chocolate whipped cream.   
"Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm...."   
Then, everyone just took a moment. 

"Chocolate whipped cream or no chocolate whipped cream -- " Amelia began.   
Everyone looked at Zelgadis, who shook his head.   
"No," he said.   
"It'd be _fun_," Lina cajoled.   
"No."   
"I'll stop complaining about the lack of a costume budget."   
"No you won't -- or Amelia will just do it for you. The answer is no chocolate whipped cream. And you really don't want to know what that white stuff in the bowl actually is."   
"What's the rating for this production?" Gourry asked. Everyone stared at him.   
"That's disgusting," Amelia said.   
"He started it," Gourry pointed at Zelgadis.   
"Me?" Zelgadis allowed himself to look righteously indignant. "I was just letting people imagine guargum and carageenan."   
"Huh?" Gourry asked.   
"Never mind," Amelia said. "You'd get a headache trying to imagine that stuff anyway. Lina, I am still obliged to _HEAL_ thee."   
"I really think we'd be better off..." Lina resumed her retreat to another part of the large room.   
"Gourry..."   
The swordsman grabbed Lina.   
"Hey!" Lina exclaimed. "Owww! That hurts!"   
"Sorry, but it's for your own good, Lina," Gourry said to her, dragging the currently-non-sorceress over in front of the princess. "And ours," he realized, "supposing that your magic's good for the rest of us."   
"Well of course it -- Owww!" Lina screamed as Amelia attempted to lay healing hands on her. "Haven't I made it clear to you guys that I hurt _everywhere_?"   
The healing princess seized Lina in a bearhug around her blanket. "Now Lina, this is going to hurt me -- well, maybe not..." Amelia went ahead and chanted:

_"By the humours drawn unto me,   
By the pain not soothed by Tums,   
By the shores of Gichy-goony,   
By the pricking of my thumbs:   
Something healing this way comes!"_

There was a puzzled silence, broken only by Lina's ragged breathing.   
"That was perhaps the lamest incantation I have ever heard," Zelgadis said at last.   
"Really?" Gourry asked. "I kind of feel like I might've heard it before."   
"You make a habit of listening to doggerel?" the chimera asked him. "Don't bother saying anything," he quickly added. "Did it work, Amelia?" he asked. "She is better, I hope."   
"Not really --" Confused, Amelia let go of Lina, who staggered. "I mean ..." Amelia's face clouded over. "You're not hurt _at all_, Lina!" she shouted. "You lying weasel!"   
"I am _not_ a lying weasel!" Lina insisted quietly. Her attention was on propping herself up against the table and keeping her blanket wrapped around herself. "I never said I got harmed by what Mary Sue did to me. I just got attacked a lot ... She clobbered me. I'm hurting everywhere. All right?"   
"She attacked you and hit you repeatedly and you feel awful but she didn't do anything to you?" Amelia asked.   
"Uh, yeah," Lina sighed. "That's kind of how it went."   
"But that doesn't make any sense!" Amelia shouted.   
Lina looked up at her. "So?" she asked. 

Story copyright 2002 Alan Lauderdale, parodied characters copyright H. Kanzaka / R. Araizumi.


End file.
